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Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
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155 Quotes that Reveal the Profound Wisdom of a Literary Master

Discover the profound wisdom of Fyodor Dostoyevsky through his most famous quotes. From the exploration of human nature and the pursuit of meaning to the complexities of love and self-destruction, these quotes offer a glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest literary masters of all time.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, often known as Dostoyevsky, was a highly influential Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Considered one of the greatest novelists in world literature, his works explore the human condition within the troubled political and social climate of 19th-century Russia. Dostoevsky delves into various philosophical and religious themes in his acclaimed novels such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. He is also recognized for his novella Notes from Underground, which is regarded as an early work of existentialist literature.

Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky developed a passion for literature at an early age through fairy tales and books by Russian and foreign authors. After experiencing personal hardship with the death of his mother and being arrested for belonging to a literary group critical of Tsarist Russia, he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. Despite facing financial difficulties due to his gambling addiction at times, Dostoevsky became immensely popular as a writer over time.

Dostoevsky's extensive body of work consists of novels, novellas, short stories, and other writings that have been widely read both within Russia and beyond its borders. His literary accomplishments influenced numerous later writers including Russian authors Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, as well as philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated into over 170 languages, Dostoevsky's books continue to inspire films and contribute to various literary movements such as Existentialism and Freudianism.

With a noble family background rooted in Russian Orthodox Christianity on his paternal side and merchant heritage on his maternal side, Dostoevsky had diverse familial roots. His father pursued a career in medicine and eventually became a senior physician, while his mother's lineage consisted of merchants. Dostoevsky's upbringing included spending summers in the town of Darovoye, where his family owned a small estate. He was one of eight children born to his parents and had siblings named Varvara, Andrei, Lyubov, Vera, Nikolai, and Aleksandra.

✵ 11. November 1821 – 28. January 1881   •   Other names Fiodor Michajlovič Dostojevskij, Fëdor Michajlovič Dostoevskij, Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: 155   quotes 81   likes

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

“But,' I [Dmitri Karamazov] asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Book XI, ch. 4 (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Life , God , Intelligence , Future

“Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

Hurt

“Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A Writer's Diary, Volume 1: 1873-1876 (1994), p. 734 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=38xQHS4h0yEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=pt-BR&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Life , Soul , Idea , Personality

“Yes — you, you alone must pay for everything because you turned up like this, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the nastiest, most ridiculous, pettiest, stupidest, and most envious worm of all those living on earth who're no better than me in any way, but who, the devil knows why, never get embarrassed, while all my life I have to endure insults from every louse — that's my fate. What do I care that you do not understand any of this?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 2, Chapter 9 (pages 108-109)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Life , Fate , Way , Understanding

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

“If not reason, then the devil.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

“If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

God

“For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Life , Men , Money , People

“When… in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 7 (page 20)
Notes from Underground (1864)

“Once it's been proved to you that you're descended from an ape, it's no use pulling a face; just accept it. Once they've proved to you that a single droplet of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow human beings and consequently that all so-called virtues and duties are nothing but ravings and prejudices, then accept that too, because there's nothing to be done.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1 Chapter 3 (page 14)
Notes from Underground (1864)

“I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings — of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V

Truth

“Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love , Men

“A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

Family , Heart

“Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As quoted in "Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918: Power, Territory, Identity" by Dominic Livien in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No.2 (April 1999), pp. 180

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

Truth , World

“It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

Part 4, Chapter 7 http://books.google.com/books?id=WuAKAQAAMAAJ&q="It's+easier+for+a+Russian+to+become+an+atheist+than+for+anyone+else+in+the+world"&pg=PA548#v=onepage
The Idiot (1868–9)

World

“I consider you the most honest and truthful of men, more honest and truthful than anyone; and if they say that your mind... that is, that you're sometimes afflicted in your mind, it's unjust. I made up my mind about that, and disputed with others, because, though you really are mentally afflicted (you won't be angry with that, of course; I'm speaking from a higher point of view), yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them. It's something, in fact, they have never dreamed of. For there are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn't matter.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

Men , Truth , Dreams , Affliction

“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Heart , Christ

“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

God , Question

“And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I’d say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.... Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 7 (page 23)
Notes from Underground (1864)

Feeling , Learning

“Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Time , Waiting , Silence , Kiss

“A terrible commotion rages among them, the populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself…. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His feet, the calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him…”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Light , Life , Appearance , Rage

“He comes silently and unannounced; yet all--how strange--yea, all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows Him…. Silently, and with a smile of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense crowd, and moves softly on.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Grand Inquisitor

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), The Grand Inquisitor

Smile

“Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but only for myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming, cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing, mine alone; that it was I had brought them corruption, contamination and falsity. I besought them to crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood should be drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified me, they declared that they had only got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was becoming dangerous and that they should lock me up in a madhouse if I did not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession of my soul that my heart was wrung, and I felt as though I were dying; and then... then I awoke.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V

Despair , Soul , Suffering , Heart

“Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, 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. I'm not afraid for you now;”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)

Forgiveness , Understanding , Light , Bad luck

“First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot, Part IV., Chapter V.
General, The Idiot (1868–9)

Fools , World

“If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.'”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.
Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
General, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

God , Happiness , Men

“I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November — on the third of November, to be precise — and I remember every instant since.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: General, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), I

Truth , Problem

“I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

General, The Idiot (1868–9)

Forgiveness , Truth , Way , Love

“To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 1, Chapter 9 (page 32)
General, Notes from Underground (1864)

“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Humiliated and Insulted

General, The Insulted and the Injured (1861)

“Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The House of the Dead https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-8PhfAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1 (1915), as translated by Constance Garnett, p. 16
General

Money , Time , Freedom