Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.
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Oh, gentlemen, 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. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.
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Hell is the inability to love.
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Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
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It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
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If God does not exist, everything is permitted.
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Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it’s not true and that it’s blushing just as I am now, all over.
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People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
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You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.
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It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.
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Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
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Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
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Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
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You did not come down from the cross when they shouted to you, mocking and reviling you: "Come down from the cross and we will believe that it is you." You did not come down because, again, you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous...I swear, man is created weaker and baser than you thought him! How, how can he ever accomplish the same things as you? ...Respecting him less, you would have demanded less of him, and that would be closer to love, for his burden would be lighter.
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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.
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Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
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It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.
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The world will be saved by beauty.
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Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.
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The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
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I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
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They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!
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Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation.
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Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.