Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky


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Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.


Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.


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.


A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.


Realists do not fear the results of their study.


It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.


It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?


Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!


A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.


Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.


Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.


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.


Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.


Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.


The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.


Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.


To love someone means to see him as God intended him.


There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.


There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.


The soul is healed by being with children.