Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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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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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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We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is.
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Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
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Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith.
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What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?
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It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.
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Life had stepped into the place of theory.
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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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A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
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I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.
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A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.
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It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!
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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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I have a plan-to go mad.
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Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.
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...one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational.
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Know that I've forgotten precisely nothing; but I've driven it all out of my head for a time, even the memories--until I've radically improved my circumstances. Then...then you'll see, I'll rise from the dead!
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In such situations, of course, people don't nurse their anger silently, they moan aloud; but these are not frank, straightforward moans, there is a kind of cunning malice in them, and that's the whole point. Those very moans express the sufferer's delectation; if he did not enjoy his moans, he wouldn't be moaning.
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It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!
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Then Christ will say to us, 'Come you also! Come you drunkards! Come you weaklings! Come you depraved!' And he will say to us, 'Vile creatures, you in the image of the beast and you who bear his mark. All the same, you come too!' And the wise and prudent will say, 'Lord, why are you welcoming them? And he will say, 'O wise and prudent, I am welcoming them because not one of them has ever judged himself worthy. And he will stretch out his arms to us, and we shall fall at his feet, and burst into sobs, and then we shall understand everything, everything! Lord, your kingdom come!
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Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
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Who doesn't desire his fathers death?
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One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!