Quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

About Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. Many of his works are marked by a preoccupation with Christianity, explored through the prism of the individual confronted with life's hardships and beauty.
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Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo a...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

...the laws of nature have continually all my life offended me more than anything.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly. I will tell y...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Author Bio

  • NameFyodor Dostoyevsky
  • DescriptionRussian 19th century author
  • AliasesDostoyevsky
  • BornNovember 11, 1821
  • DiedFebruary 9, 1881
  • CountryRussian Empire
  • ProfessionTranslator; Philosopher; Poet; Novelist; Essayist; Short Story Writer; Journalist; Writer
  • WorksNotes From Underground; Crime And Punishment; The Idiot; Demons; The Brothers Karamazov; The House Of The Dead; The Gambler