Fyodor Dostoyevsky (born November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia—died February 9 [January 28, Old Style], 1881, St. Petersburg) Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction.

Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

1. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2. “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

3. “Beauty will save the world.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4. “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

5. “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

6. “It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

7. “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 Dostoyevsky

8. “But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

9. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

10. “If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

11. “This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

12. “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

13. “To think too much is a disease.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

14. “The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

15. “Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering…”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

16. “Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

17. “To go wrong in one’s own way is better then to go right in someone else’s.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

18. “To live without Hope is to Cease to live.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

19. “I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20. “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

21. “If there is no God, then I am God.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

22. “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

23. “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!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

24. “People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25. “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

26. “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

27. “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. “For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

29. “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

30. “The world will be saved by beauty.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

31. “Reason is the slave of passion.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

32. “If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

33. “Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34. “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

35. “Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

36. “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

37. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

38. “The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

39. “Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

40. “When reason fails, the devil helps!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

41. “You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

42. “You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

43. “Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

44. “I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

45. “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

46. “When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

47. “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

48. “I utter what you would not dare think.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

49. “The Russian soul is a dark place.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

50. “The soul is healed by being with children.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

51. “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.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

52. “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

53. “To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

54. “Without God all things are permitted.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

55. “A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

56. “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

57. “I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

58. “Money is coined liberty.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

59. “A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

60. “Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. “I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

62. “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

63. “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

64. “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

65. “If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

66. “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

67. “If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

68. “We are citizens of eternity.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

69. “Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God’s help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

70. “Oh I’ve plenty of time, my time is entirely my own.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

71. “It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

72. “Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

73. “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 Dostoyevsky

74. “If he’s alive he has everything in his power! Whose fault is it he doesn’t understand that.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

75. “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

76. “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

77. “I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

78. “He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

79. “There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words. Your thought, even a bad one, while it is with you, is always more profound, but in words it is more ridiculous and dishonorable.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

80. “Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

81. “There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

82. “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

83. “The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

84. “It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

85. “To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

86. “I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

87. “Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

88. “But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

89. “And 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

90. “I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

91. “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

92. “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 Dostoyevsky

93. “My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

94. “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

95. “Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

96. “May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

97. “I agree that two and two make four is an excellent thing; but to give everything its due, two and two make five is also a very fine thing.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

98. “Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you – and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

99. “I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

100. “Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

102. “I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

103. “Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the PRIVACY of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

104. “I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

105. “Only through suffering can we find ourselves.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

106. “Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

107. “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

108. “The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

109. “There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

110. “I want to talk about everything with at least one person as I talk about things with myself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

111. “Be the sun and all will see you.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

112. “Everything passes, only truth remains.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

113. “Everything seems stupid when it fails.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

114. “A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

115. “I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

116. “Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don’t trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

117. “Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

118. “If God is dead, everything is allowed.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

119. “Love life more than the meaning of it?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

120. “Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

121. “I have a plan-to go mad.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

122. “Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

123. “Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

124. “A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

125. “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

126. “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

127. “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

128. “Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

129. “Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

130. “I’m a master of speaking silently – all my life I’ve spoken silently and I’ve lived through entire tragedies in silence.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

131. “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 Dostoyevsky

132. “My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

133. “Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. Loving all, you will perceive the mystery of God in all.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

134. “Pass us by, and forgive us our happiness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

135. “And you’re sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes – you’re sorry, for you didn’t even have time to fall in love…”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

136. “If not reason, then the devil.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

137. “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

138. “Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

139. “In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

140. “Hell is the inability to love.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

141. “Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

142. “I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

143. “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

144. “In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

145. “The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

146. “Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

147. “Life had stepped into the place of theory.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

148. “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

149. “There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

150. “Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

151. “Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

152. “Silence is always beautiful, and a silent person is always more beautiful than one who talks.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

153. “They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

154. “If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

155. “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 Dostoyevsky

156. “Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

157. “For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

158. “Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

159. “If the person laughs well, they are a good person.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

160. “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

161. “My soul bleeds and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

162. “Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

163. “And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better – cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

164. “Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

165. “Wealth is the number of things one can do without.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

166. “He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

167. “Don’t be like everyone else, even if you are the only one.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

168. “People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

169. “I believe there is no one deeper, lovelier, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus…”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

170. “It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

171. “Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

172. “It’s in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

173. “Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

174. “With love one can live even without happiness.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

175. “Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

176. “I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease – a genuine, absolute disease.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

177. “For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

178. “Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

179. “The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

180. “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

181. “It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

182. “In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

183. “But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

184. “There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

185. “In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

186. “Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

187. “It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

188. “Tyranny is a habit which may be developed until at last it becomes a disease. I declare that the noblest nature can become so hardened and bestial that nothing distinguishes it from that of a wild animal. Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

189. “Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

190. “To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

191. “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

192. “It’s difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

193. “There is a crack in my soul, and I can hear it trembling, quivering, stirring deep inside me.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

194. “It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

195. “They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

196. “Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

197. “There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

198. “For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

199. “There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

200. “If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky