Delve our curated selection of Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes, inviting contemplation on human emotions, morality, and existential questions.
A renowned Russian novelist and philosopher, Fyodor Dostoevsky stands as one of the most influential literary figures of the 19th century. His works are celebrated for their intricate character studies and philosophical depth, provide insight about human condition.
Dostoevsky quotes, extracted from his novels and philosophical writings, encapsulate the depth and intensity of his ideas. His words touching on themes that remain pertinent to humanity’s struggles with morality, faith, and the pursuit of meaning.
In this selection of Dostoevsky quotes, offering insights into the raw emotions of his characters and provide us with a mirror to our own inner dilemmas. Each quote inviting us to reflect on our own lives to shape our understanding of the world.
Join us on a journey through 100 Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes where his words illuminate the intricate tapestry of human nature. Allow these quotes reminding us of the universal truths that shape our existence. Enjoy.
Inspirational Dostoevsky quotes
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Right attitudes produces right action
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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 Dostoevsky
Best Dostoevsky quotes
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid – the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Motivational Dostoevsky quotes
Be the sun and all will see you.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only through suffering can we find ourselves.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes about life
Life is what matters, life alone – the continuous, eternal process of discovering life – and not the discovery itself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life is in ourselves and not in the external.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life had stepped into the place of theory.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The consciousness of life is higher than life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
How good life is when one does something good and just!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
We don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Yes, that’s right… love should come before logic … Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes love
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all–embracing love
Fyodor Dostoevsky
To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people’s sins. Go, and do not be afraid.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
One must love life before loving its meaning … yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
With love one can live even without happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes on faith
Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
It’s not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
One man doesn’t believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Spiritual Dostoevsky quotes
But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I do not rebel against my God, I simply do not accept his world.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I bless the sun’s rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life––and over all is God’s truth, moving, reconciling, all–forgiving!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky
God is necessary, and therefore must exist… But I know that he does not and cannot exist… Don’t you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I’ve always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I’ve been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I’ve looked away and never could look people straight in the eye.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes on suffering
For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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
If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment–as well as the prison.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better – cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes on adversity
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
And though I suffer for you, yet it eases my heart to suffer for you.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hell is the inability to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: “Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering– that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky quotes on happiness
This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life is a gift… every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it–which is what matters most.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Men like to to count their troubles; few calculate their happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Final thoughts
These Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes invites us to engage in introspection and explore the profound questions that shape our lives. His words have transcended time and cultural boundaries, serving as a source of contemplation and inspiration for generations.
Dostoevsky quotes remain a testament to his enduring legacy as a literary giant and a philosopher of the human experience. Whether pondering the nature of suffering, the tension between good and evil, or the quest for meaning.
By reflect these Dostoevsky quotes, we are reminded of the timeless relevance of his ideas and the power of literature to illuminate the mysteries of our existence. So, allow these quotes close to your heart and to serve as a source of both solace and enlightenment.
Our aspiration is that you have found a sense of enjoyment and fulfillment in these Dostoevsky quotes. Hope that these words have resonated deeply with you, touching chords within your own thoughts and emotions.
Thank you for exploring and engaging with the enduring wisdom that Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes have to offer. As you journey through his words, may you find solace and the courage to navigate the intricate landscapes of existence with renewed determination.