Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
-
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
-
The world will be saved by beauty.
-
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.
-
Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human.
-
Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
-
My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
-
I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.
-
I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, i don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine.
-
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
-
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
-
I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.
-
Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation.
-
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.
-
If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.
-
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
-
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.
-
Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.
-
When reason fails, the devil helps!
-
Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness?
-
If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.
-
They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!
-
It's a burden to us even to be human beings-men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.
-
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.
-
Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.