Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live—that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea..."
102 Quotes
"I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live—that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea..."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky White Nights
"Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky White Nights
"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 The Brothers Karamazov
"She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame!"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment
"Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov
"But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways (...). I have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov
"Try and set yourself the task not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing comes to mind every minute."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
"Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot
"One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"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
"Who doesn't desire his father's death?"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing but if we are to give everything its due twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"We are all happy if we only knew it."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"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
"Change is what people fear most."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
✉️

Get more quotes like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's — every morning.

Join thousands of wisdom seekers getting daily quotes from 300,000+ curated sources.

Free forever. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.