Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else… . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!


Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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I was ready to leave with every load, with every worthy individual of respectable appearance hiring ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distingui...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; h...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Man does not live by bread alone.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst ch...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of dou...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every rig...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
When I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that de...
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...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting the...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
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
The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then sudde...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considere...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
In place of the clear and rigid ancient law, You [oh Lord] made man decide about good and evil for h...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
If God does not exist, then everything is permitted
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of lo...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you we...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
If you chase several hares at once, you won't overtake any one of them.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Not long ago I was much amused by imagining—what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with th...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The high road is something very, very long, of which one cannot see the end - like human life, like ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suff...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of etern...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
..., and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometimes be the means o...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and soli...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to reason can avoid such ques...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appea...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
There are some people about whom it is difficult to say anything which would describe them immediate...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Science which has become a great power in the lastcentury, has analyzed everything divine handed dow...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God s...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Without a firm idea of himself and the purpose of his life, man cannot live, and would sooner destro...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Innovators and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very of...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Отцы и учители, мыслю: "что есть ад?" Рассуждаю
так: "С...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

Answer: Of himself.

Wel...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
It's like this,' began the elder. 'All these sentences of hard labour in Siberian prisons, and forme...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Life [had] replaced logic.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY