Fyodor Dostoyevsky quotes - page 4

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I consider you the most honest and truthful of men, more honest and truthful than anyone; and if they say that your mind... that is, that you're sometimes afflicted in your mind, it's unjust. I made up my mind about that, and disputed with others, because, though you really are mentally afflicted (you won't be angry with that, of course; I'm speaking from a higher point of view), yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them. It's something, in fact, they have never dreamed of. For there are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn't matter. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand. .. and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
And now once again I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I could not answer, that is to say, again, for the hundreth time, I answered that I hated her. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Faith is not in power but in truth. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool - a faculty unheard of nowadays. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
No one but you and one ‘jade' I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, ‘Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!' And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same. View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky