Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself. Murder by legal process is immeasurably more dreadful than murder by a brigand. A man who is murdered by brigands is killed at night in a forest or somewhere else, and up to the last moment he still hopes that he will be saved. There have been instances when a man whose throat had already been cut, was still hoping, or running away or begging for his life to be spared. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away FOR CERTAIN; here you have been sentenced to death, and the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no agony greater than that. Take a soldier and put him in front of a cannon in battle and fire at him and he will still hope, but read the same soldier his death sentence FOR CERTAIN, and he will go mad or burst out crying. Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness? Why this cruel, hideous, unnecessary, and useless mockery? Possibly there are men who have sentences of death read out to them and have been given time to go through this torture, and have then been told, You can go now, you've been reprieved. Such men could perhaps tell us. It was of agony like this and of such horror that Christ spoke. No, you can't treat a mean like that.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Listen, Parfyon, a few moments ago you asked me a question, and this is my answer: the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or any crimes and misdemeanors or atheism; is is something entirely different and it will always be so; it is something our atheists will always overlook, and they will never talk about THAT. But the important thing is that you will notice it most clearly in a Russian heart, and that's the conclusion I've come to! This is one of the chief convictions I have acquired in our Russia. There's work to be done, Parfyon. Believe me, there's work to be done in our Russian world!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It's these details that ruin everything always”
― Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“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.”
― Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“If one wants to know any man well, one must consider him gradually and carefully, so as not to fall into error and prejudice”
― Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories

“in drinking I may seek compassion and feeling. It is not joy I seek, but sorrow only...I drink, for I wish doubly to suffer!”
― Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Time isn’t an object, it’s an idea. It will die out in the mind.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: ‘Yes, this is true, this is good.’ This … this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there’s no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love—oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds—the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian writer, a writer of whom I greatly admire once said, ‘We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word is spoken.”
― Emily Williams, Letters to Eloise

“Now, if the room had suddenly turned out to be full, not of policemen, but of his closest friends, he would not have been able to address a single human word to them, so abruptly had his feelings been drained.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“He suddenly felt within himself a gloomy sensation of tormented, infinite solitude, and estrangement.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man is afraid of death because he loves life.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“[...]But now, when great reforms are flowering,
Even a beadle’s hard to hook:
[...]
“Today, however, with our hosting
We have raised much capital,
And while dancing here we’re posting
A dowry to you from this hall.
Retrograde or true George-Sander,
Be exultant anyhow!
Governess by dower grander,
Spit on the rest and triumph now!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“[...] for the systematic shaking of the foundations, for the systematic corrupting of society and all principles; in order to dishearten everyone and make a hash of everything, and society being thus loosened, ailing and limp, cynical and unbelieving, but with an infinite yearning for some guiding idea and for self-preservation—to take it suddenly into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion, and supported by the whole network of fivesomes, which would have been active all the while, recruiting and searching for practically all the means and all the weak spots that could be seized upon.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“[...]it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything … The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“I'm always kind, if you wish, and that is my only failing, because one should not always be kind. I'm often very angry, with these ones here, with Ivan Fyodorovich especially, but the trouble is that I'm kindest when I'm angry. Today, before you came, I was angry and pretended I didn't and couldn't understand anything. That happens to me—like a child.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“He told me he was fully convinced that I was a perfect child myself, that is, fully a child, that I resembled an adult only in size and looks, but in development, soul, character, and perhaps even mind, I was not an adult, and I would stay that way even if I lived to be sixty. I laughed very much: he wasn't right, of course, because what's little about me? But one thing is true, that I really don't like being with adults, with people, with grown-ups—and I noticed that long ago—I don't like it because I don't know how. Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, still I'm always oppressed with them for some reason, and I'm terribly glad when I can go quickly to my comrades, and my comrades have always been children—not because I'm a child myself, but simply because I'm drawn to children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Here there is no doubt that timidity and a total lack of personal initiative have always been regarded among us as the chiefest and best sign of the practical man—and are so regarded even now. But why blame only ourselves—if this opinion can be considered an accusation? Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“I will add that in any ingenious or new human thought, or even simply in any serious human thought born in someone's head, there always remains something which it is quite impossible to convey to other people, though you may fill whole volumes with writing and spend thirty-five years trying to explain your thought; there always remains something that absolutely refuses to leave your skull and will stay with you forever; you will die with it, not having conveyed to anyone what is perhaps most important in your idea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“We can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand...and not understand ...so much.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot