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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and what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all se...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else.... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A fresh dream-fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him ! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhaus...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Do you know that I love now to recall and visit at certain dates the places where I was once happy in my own way? I love to build up my present in harmony with the irrevocable past...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At first it was simply liking, Nastenka, but now, now ! I am just in the same position as you were when you went to him with your bundle. In a worse position than you, Nastenka,because he cared for no one else as you do.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving a...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Oh, you knew that your deed would be preserved in books, would reach tghe depths of the ages and the utmost limits of the earth, and you hoped that, following you, man, too, would remain with God, having no need of miracles. But you did not know that...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sí, a veces la idea más absurda, la idea más fantástica en apariencia, se apodera de nosotros con tal fuerza que acabamos por creerla realizable.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let the readers do some of the work themselves

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he l...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [...] This naive combinati...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! The Brothers Karamaz...

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