Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
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I don’t even know what I’m writing, I have no idea, I don’t know anything, and I’m not reading over it, and I’m not correcting my style, and I’m writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!
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Everything seems stupid when it fails.
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The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.
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You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.
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... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
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Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That's the way to get on in life.
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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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Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.
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Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.
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In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilt for another's sin. There is no isolated sin.
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Humanity can live without science, it can live without bread, but it cannot live without beauty. Without beauty, there would be nothing left to do in this life. Here the secret lies. Here lies the entire story.
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But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.
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No, evidently habit means a lot. The devil knows what habit can do to a person.
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They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?
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Do you know that ages will pass and mankind will proclaim in its wisdom and science that there is no crime and, therefore no sin, but that there are only hungry people. 'Feed them first and then demand virtue of them!' - that is what they will inscribe on their banner which they will raise against you and which will destroy your temple.
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In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.
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The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
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Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. If anyone finds out he'll become happy at once.
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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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Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
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Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.
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Ivan is the incarnation of the refusal to be the only one saved. He throws in his lot with the damned and, for their sake, rejects eternity. If he had faith, he could, in fact, be saved, but others would be damned and suffering would continue. There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion.
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Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
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Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.