Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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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.
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They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!
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When reason fails, the devil helps!
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Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
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Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.
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If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
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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.
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Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
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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.
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. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .
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Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.
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Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness?
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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.
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There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
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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.
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Let us be servants in order to be leaders.
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Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.
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Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.
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To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
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I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.
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To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.
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If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.
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Faith is not in power but in truth.
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My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.