Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.

—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

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.

—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

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 Dostoevsky

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Beauty will save the world

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering..

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 Dostoevsky

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 Dostoevsky

Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 Dostoevsky

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

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

I love mankind, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Oh, to what lengths can desperation drive a man!

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

I do believe the best definition of man is that he is the eternally ungrateful biped.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

But he felt a deep foreboding that despite all the good around him and perhaps even somewhere within it there still resided something morbid.

—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

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

The deeper the grief, the closer is God.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

When reason fails, the devil helps!

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

The world will be saved by beauty.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky