Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Paradise is hidden in each one of use, it is concealed within me too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

352. “Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

353. “On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

355. “There’s the Holy Ghost and there’s the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit.” “How do you know him from an ordinary tit?” “He speaks.” “How does he speak, in what language?” “Human language.” “And what does he tell you?” “Why, to-day he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me unseemly questions. You.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

356. “No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will come.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

357. “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

358. “A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

359. “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

360. “Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man’s free will?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

361. “What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

363. “I’ve always wanted all or nothing!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

364. “Being in love doesn’t mean loving.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

366. “To cook your hare you must first catch it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

367. “From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

368. “Woe to the man who offends a small child!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

369. “I’m sorry this letter is so long. I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

370. “Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

371. “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

372. “In a way there’s only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

374. “I’m drunk but truthful.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

375. “They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

378. “If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls exhausted.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

379. “If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. if I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your sins but the sins of others.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

381. “Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

382. “Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

383. “You are very beautiful, Aglaya Ivanovna, so beautiful that one is afraid to look at you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

384. “In fact, we have lost touch so badly that we often feel a kind of loathing for genuine ‘living live,’ and hence cannot endure being reminded of it. We’ve reached a point where we virtually regard ‘living life’ as hard labor, almost servitude and we all agree in private that it’s much better ’according to books.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

385. “But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time are socialists. These are the people we are most afraid of. They are dreadful people! The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

388. “Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

389. “The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

391. “To her, and to father! Whew! A coincidence! Why was I calling you, wishing for you, why was I longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs? Because I wanted to send you precisely to father, and then to her as well, to Katerina Ivanovna, to have done with her and with father. To send an angel. I could have sent anybody, but I need to send an angel. And here you are going to her and father yourself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

392. “To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

393. “People. People. Endless noise. And I am so tired. And I would like to sleep under trees; red ones, blue ones, swirling passionate ones.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

394. “You believe in the crystal palace, eternally indestructible, that is, one at which you can never stick out your tongue furtively nor make a rude gesture, even with your fist hidden away. Well, perhaps I’m so afraid of this building precisely because it’s made of crystal and it’s eternally indestructible, and because it won’t be possible to stick one’s tongue out even furtively.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

395. “And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

396. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

400. “As a Russian proverb has it, ‘Catch several hares and you won’t catch one.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky