Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
-
Oh I've plenty of time, my time is entirely my own.
-
And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.
-
I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well.
-
One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.
-
It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.
-
Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering.
-
You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.
-
On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.
-
... the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person.
-
For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.
-
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
-
One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil.
-
Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
-
I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.
-
What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.
-
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
-
In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged.
-
Remember that you must never sell your soul. Never accept payment in advance.... Never give a work to the printer before it is finished. This is the worst thing you can do.... It constitutes the murder of your own ideas.
-
What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.
-
There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority.
-
Originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
-
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
-
And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty
-
--you wouldn't have hurt me like this for nothing. So what have I done? How have I wronged you? Tell me.