Top 500 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

403. “Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

404. “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

405. “Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

406. “We are all happy if we but knew it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

407. “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

408. “Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

409. “You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

410. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

412. “Truth with love is a lie.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

413. “In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

414. “I want to suffer so that I may love.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

415. “It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself – as though that were so necessary – that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

416. “No, evidently habit means a lot. The devil knows what habit can do to a person.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

417. “You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

418. “My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it’s absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

419. “If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

420. “How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

421. “The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

422. “On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

423. “For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

424. “Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

425. “We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

426. “Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

427. “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

428. “Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

429. “Humiliate the reason and distort the soul.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

430. “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

431. “Well, let them talk nonsense: perhaps then they’ll talk sense later.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

433. “To confess one’s guilt and one’s original sin is little, very little; one must wean oneself away from them completely. And that takes more than a little time.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

437. “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

438. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

440. “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

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

443. “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

444. “For the secret of human existence lies not only in living, but in knowing what to live for.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

445. “I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness – a real thorough-going illness.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

446. “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

447. “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

448. “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

449. “Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications in which we so delight. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

450. “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