108 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes to Explore Human Psychology
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, essayist, short story writer, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. He lost both his parents during his teen years and this affected him greatly. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburg’s literary circles.
Many of his works contain a strong emphasis on Christianity, and its message of absolute love, forgiveness, and charity, explored within the realm of the individual, confronted with all of the life’s hardships and beauty. His most acclaimed works include “Crime and Punishment” (1866), “The Idiot” (1869), ”Demons” (1872) and “The Brothers Karamazov” (1880). Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. His writings influenced a great number of writers including Russians like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov as well as philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Table of Contents
- Short Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Funny Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Inspirational Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Cynical Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Insightful Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Romantic Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Poetic Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Long Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes On Images
Short Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Beauty will save the world. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The soul is healed by being with children. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Without God all things are permitted. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I want to suffer so that I may love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Be the sun and all will see you. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- When reason fails, the devil helps. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Compassion is the chief law of human existence. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I utter what you would not dare think. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Love life more than the meaning of it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Funny Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. 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
- You can be sincere and still be stupid. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel! Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Inspirational Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- One must have the courage to dare. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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
- Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be! Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- But how could you live and have no story to tell? Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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 Dostoyevsky
- Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cynical Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It’s by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth. I talk nonsense, therefore I’m human. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I love mankind, he said, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink. I drink so that I may suffer twice as much! Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s human, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Insightful Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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 Dostoyevsky
- The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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 Dostoyevsky
- What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- To fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Romantic Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- 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 Dostoyevsky
- Forgive me… for my love ― for ruining you with my love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- To love someone means to see them as God intended them. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Poetic Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God! Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- They were like two enemies in love with one another. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime? Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- What’s strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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 Dostoyevsky
- But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road ― there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there – that is living. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Long Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes
- 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 laughs well, he’s a good man. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 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, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn’t help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- One can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one’s idea for thirty-five years; there’s something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes On Images
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