Dostoevsky Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Dostoevsky quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Humiliate the reason and distort the soul. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Gambling is a most foolish and imprudent pursuit. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Life is in ourselves and not in the external. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

He seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though often grieving bitterly. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Above all, don't lie to yourself. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yes, that's right ... love should come before logic ... Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Every man needs a place to go to. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Money is coined liberty. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Make us your slaves, but feed us. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Homeopathic doses are perhaps the strongest. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I've long stopped worrying about who invented whom - God man or man God. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

No, no, I'm a lowbrow. I read [Dostoevsky] more out of obligation than enjoyment. For enjoyment, for me, it's a beer and the football game. — Woody Allen

Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative. — Phil Klay

If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

An anguish of longing would boil up inside me; a hysterical thirst for contradictions and contrasts would appear, and I would embark on dissipations. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky preaches the morality of the pariah, the morality of the slave. — Georg Brandes

My feelings, gratitude, for instance, are denied me simply because of my social position. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself ... — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have been tortured with longing to believe ... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

When ... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If you can put the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my acts?' then you are responsible. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 Dostoevsky

Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The degree of a nation's civilization can be seen in the way it treats its prisoners — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

This man (Bergman) is one of the few film directors-perhaps the only one in the world-to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Life is what matters, life alone - the continuous, eternal process of discovering life - and not the discovery itself. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell.
(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy) — Joseph Brodsky

He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He who desires to see the living God face-to-face should not seek him in the empty, firmament of his mind, but in human love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus ... — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

You simply can't imagine what men will say! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's hero is not an objectified image but an autonomous discourse, pure voice; we do not see him, we hear him; — Mikhail Bakhtin

Taking a new step ... is what people fear most. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

My father gave me Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' when I was in junior high; my junior high, angst-filled soul responded to that. — Janet Fitch

Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid-how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Above all, do not lie to yourself. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is no God, everything is permitted. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The consciousness of life is higher than life. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

He who gets nearer the sun is leader, the aristocrat of aristocrats, or he who, like Dostoevsky, gets nearest the moon of our non-being. — D.H. Lawrence

I am crazy about mysterious things. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we're both unhappy, and we both suffer. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

What you need more than anything in life is a definite position. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans. — Richard Brautigan

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky does not believe his own words, and he is trying to replace a lack of faith with "feeling" and eloquence. — Lev Shestov

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In Dostoevsky, two thoughts are already two people, for there are no thoughts belonging to no one and every thought represents an entire person. This — Mikhail Bakhtin

Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time. — Janet Fitch

We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is no God, then I am God. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In none of Dostoevsky's novels is there any evolution of a unified spirit; in fact there is no evolution, no growth in general, — Mikhail Bakhtin

Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss. — Albert Einstein

There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering - that is a fact. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

They were like two enemies in love with one another. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Everywhere I am the object of an unbelievable esteem, the interest in me is, quite simply, tremendous. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am not a scoundrel, but I'm broadminded. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To love someone means to see him as God intended him. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Trifles, trifles are what matter! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there were no God, he would have to be invented. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If Darwin had seen in life what Dostoevsky saw, he would not have talked of the law of the preservation of species, but of its destruction. — Lev Shestov