Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age.
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I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
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Above all, don't lie to yourself.
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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.
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Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other 'higher' ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.
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As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.
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Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.
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Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.
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Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.
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It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.
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Above all, do not lie to yourself.
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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.
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Alyosha's heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.
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You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all.
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Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
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Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.
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I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man.
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Life is in ourselves and not in the external.
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But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!
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We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.
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I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love.
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In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.
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But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.
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You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.