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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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Equality lies only in human moral dignity. ... Let there be brothers first, then there will be brotherhood, and only then will there be a fair sharing of goods among brothers.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Or renounce life altogether! Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Every man needs a place to go to.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Paradise is hidden in each one of use, it is concealed within me too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
We are born dead, and we are becoming more and more contented with our condition. We are acquiring the taste for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else - something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath forever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls exhausted.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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The Russian soul is a dark place.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky -
To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.
Fyodor Dostoevsky