TOPICS
SPEAKERS
HOME
BROWSE TOPICS
BROWSE SPEAKERS
◀ BACK

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Other
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And where there is love, you can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow; it is good to live in the world. However you live.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now.
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yesterday in her words there was such tenderness, so much heartfelt kindness towards me... How she flattered me, how she treated me with affection, how she cheered and pampered my heart! Oh, how much coquetry springs forth from happiness!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.
From Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky to his family and friends
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.
From Notes from the Underground / The Gambler
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.'
'So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?'
'He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And where there is love, you can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow; it is good to live in the world. However you live.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now.
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yesterday in her words there was such tenderness, so much heartfelt kindness towards me... How she flattered me, how she treated me with affection, how she cheered and pampered my heart! Oh, how much coquetry springs forth from happiness!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.
From Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky to his family and friends
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.
From Notes from the Underground / The Gambler
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.'
'So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?'
'He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And where there is love, you can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow; it is good to live in the world. However you live.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now.
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
From Crime and Punishment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yesterday in her words there was such tenderness, so much heartfelt kindness towards me... How she flattered me, how she treated me with affection, how she cheered and pampered my heart! Oh, how much coquetry springs forth from happiness!
From White Nights
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart — that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.
From Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky to his family and friends
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.
From Notes from the Underground / The Gambler
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whether he lives or doesn't live, he himself will be God. And that other God will no longer be.'
'So, that other God does exist, in your opinion?'
'He doesn't exist, but he does exist. In the stone there' no pain, but in the fear of the stone there is pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote