Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “And if there’s love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

302. “Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

303. “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

304. “I’ve never been a coward at heart, although I’ve always been a coward in action;.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

305. “Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

306. “They were like two enemies in love with one another.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

307. “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

308. “Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

309. “I have no self-respect. But can a man of acute sensibility respect himself at all?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

310. “There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

311. “What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

312. “Who doesn’t desire his fathers death?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

313. “Which is better a cheap happiness or lofty suffering? Tell me then, which is better?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

314. “The consciousness of life is higher than life.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

315. “I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

316. “In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

317. “Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

318. “I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

321. “God is the pain of the fear of death.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

322. “Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow – they don’t hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

323. “Let us be servants in order to be leaders.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

324. “I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

326. “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

327. “I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies – I exist. I’m tormented on the rack – but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar – I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

328. “In that case, of course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

329. “What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

330. “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

331. “The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

332. “Look how our young people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet’s question what there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in their minds and buried under the sands.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

333. “A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

334. “It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

335. “For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

337. “A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

338. “What do you think?” shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

339. “Just take a look around you: Blood is flowing in rivers and in such a jolly way you’d think it was champagne.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

340. “Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

341. “I do not wish you much happiness – it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people’s philosophy, I will simply repeat: ‘Live more’ and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

342. “We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

343. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

345. “I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

346. “To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

348. “Do you know I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced, in fact, that everything is disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man’s disillusionment – still I should want to live and, having once tried of the cup, I would not turn from it until I have drained it!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

349. “Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky