Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
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Just take a look around you: Blood is flowing in rivers and in such a jolly way you’d think it was champagne.
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Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.
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Without God all things are permitted.
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Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then... Well, then I woke up.
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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.
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The absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities.
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Every man needs a place to go to.
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The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
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I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye.
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My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.
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Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.
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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.
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This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.
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I don’t understand anything...and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact...If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact.
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Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with.
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Everything passes, only truth remains.
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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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Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.
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... what you need more than anything in life is a definite position.
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Reason and Knowledge have always played a secondary, subordinate, auxiliary role in the life of peoples, and this will always be the case. A people is shaped and driven forward by an entirely different kind of force, one which commands and coerces them and the origin of which is obscure and inexplicable despite the reality of its presence.
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For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.
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Homeopathic doses are perhaps the strongest.
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Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task.