Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

252. “If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

253. “Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

254. “Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

255. “To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

256. “But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

257. “He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

258. “Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

259. “A fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides, he always says more than he needs to.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

260. “There are strange friendships: two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

261. “It’s in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

262. “Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

263. “There is no idea, no fact, which could not be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

264. “It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

265. “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

266. “But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

267. “I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

268. “There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

269. “Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

270. “Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

271. “You can’t be angry with me, because I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

272. “To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

273. “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

274. “Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

275. “Life is in ourselves and not in the external.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

276. “Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

277. “The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

278. “But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

279. “Latterly he tormented me, too: it was all quite natural, human beings are created in order to torment one another.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

280. “Life is what matters, life alone – the continuous, eternal process of discovering life – and not the discovery itself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

281. “To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

282. “Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

283. “Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

284. “There’s nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

285. “Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

286. “I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it in my mind. I have seen it, SEEN IT and the living image of it has filled my soul forever...”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

287. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

288. “It is man’s unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

289. “Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

290. “I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Featured in: Real Quotes

291. “Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

292. “Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

293. “Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

294. “One cannot love what one does not know.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

295. “If you can put the question, ‘Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?’ then you are responsible.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

296. “I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Featured in: Real Quotes

297. “A true friend of mankind whose heart has but once quivered in compassion over the sufferings of the people, will understand and forgive all the impassable alluvial filth in which they are submerged, and will be able to discover the diamonds in the filth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

298. “One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

299. “Atheism: It seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by Christ, but by force.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

300. “Hold your tongue; you won’t understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky