Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

302. “Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

303. “Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

304. “Now I’m living out my life in a corner, trying to console myself with the stupid, useless excuse that an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything, that only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

305. “Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

306. “Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

307. “Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

308. “Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

309. “I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

310. “Hang your merit. I don’t seek anyone’s approbation.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

311. “Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

312. “Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

313. “Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

314. “And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

315. “If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s human, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

316. “You began with a lie, what began with a lie was bound to also end with a lie. That is a law of nature.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

317. “Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

318. “He’s an intelligent man, but it takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

319. “God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby’s face.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

320. “As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

321. “Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love occasionally, even the wicked can.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

322. “Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

323. “I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

324. “The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

325. “Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

326. “Does the fellow want his head smashed?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

327. “We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

328. “He could not endure without mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so inferior to him.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

329. “Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

330. “Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

331. “The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

332. “I’m drunk but truthful.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

333. “Man is bound to lie about himself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

334. “If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery of things.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

335. “There is among the people a silent, long-suffering grief; it withdraws into itself and is silent.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

336. “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

337. “Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive follies of mankind and nothing more.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

338. “When reason fails, the devil helps!” he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

339. “It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

340. “Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

341. “Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are everyone,” I thought–and pondered.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

342. “Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

343. “And if there’s love, you can do without happiness too. Even with sorrow, life is sweet.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

344. “I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don’t want to be happy.” “You are in love with disorder?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

345. “Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It’s by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I’m human.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

346. “My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man’s life?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

348. “His wife, however, happened to be the only woman in his life who failed totally to arouse any passion in him whatsoever.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky