Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
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401. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

403. “The first thing is to lower the level of education, science and accomplishment.1 A high level of science and accomplishment is accessible only to people of high ability, and there’s no need for high ability! People of high ability have always seized power and been despots. People of high ability can’t help but be despots and have always corrupted more than they have brought benefit; they are sent into exile or executed.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

404. “Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you – alas, it is true of almost every one of us!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

405. “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

406. “Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

407. “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

408. “One man doesn’t believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

409. “At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

410. “I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

411. “The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

412. “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

413. “There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

414. “My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

415. “Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

416. “That’s just the point: an honest and sensitive man opens his heart, and the man of business goes on eating – and then he eats you up.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

417. “It’s in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

418. “The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

419. “Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.” “They.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

420. “At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that if I walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where the sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

421. “But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

422. “Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

423. “The formula ‘Two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

424. “Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

425. “Lamentations ease the heart only by straining and exacerbating it more and more. Such grief does not even want consolation; it is nourished by the sense of its unquenchableness. Lamentations are simply the need to constantly irritate the wound.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

426. “I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

427. “And though I suffer for you, yet it eases my heart to suffer for you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

428. “Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

429. “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

430. “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

431. “The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

432. “I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and longed to go and seek there the key of all mysteries, thinking that I might find there a new life, perhaps some great city where life should be grander and richer – and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

433. “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

434. “Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

435. “Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

436. “You see, Rodya, to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the world is always to keep to the seasons; if you don’t insist on having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

437. “What is honour, my dear, when you have nothing to eat?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

438. “And in fact you’re not like everyone else: you weren’t ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

439. “One circumstance tormented me then: Namely, that no one else was like me, and I was like no one else. I am only one, and they are all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

440. “There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

441. “Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

442. “But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

443. “It’s precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

444. “Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions – it’s like a dream.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

445. “A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

446. “One can fall in love and still hate.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

447. “Alyosha’s heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

448. “Speak of a wolf and you see his tail!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

449. “The chief thing is to love others likeyourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted – you will find out at once how to arrange it all.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

450. “Catch several hares and you won’t catch one.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky