Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
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Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
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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.
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Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything!
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Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
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Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.
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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 all to blame for them. [...] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
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Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
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Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.
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Father monks, why do you fast! Why do you expect reward in heaven for that?...No, saintly monk, you try being virtuous in the world, do good to society, without shutting yourself up in a monastery at other people's expense, and without expecting a reward up aloft for it--you'll find that a bit harder.
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Who doesn't desire his fathers death?
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One must love life before loving its meaning ... yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us.
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Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.
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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.
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When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.
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I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'" Excuse me, gentleman, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you.
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That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.
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Trifles, trifles are what matter!
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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.
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I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts.
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The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
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Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else.
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Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
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One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.