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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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NOT YET RATED▼
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Philosophical, Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Forgive me... for my love - for ruining you with my love.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I don't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through her I've become a man. Will they marry us? If they don't I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day...
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Death
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Topic: Relationships
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Philosophical, Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Forgive me... for my love - for ruining you with my love.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I don't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through her I've become a man. Will they marry us? If they don't I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day...
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Death
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Topic: Relationships
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Philosophical, Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Religion
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Forgive me... for my love - for ruining you with my love.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn't see it. No, she still thinks I don't love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only that infernal body of hers that tortured me, but now I've taken all her soul into my soul and through her I've become a man. Will they marry us? If they don't I will die of jealousy. I imagine something every day...
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?
From White Nights
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Death
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Love
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.
Topic: Philosophical
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
how anxiously I yearned for those I had forsaken.
From The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Topic: Relationships
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.
From The Brothers Karamazov
Topic: Happiness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
NOT YET RATED▼
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
Topic: Hope
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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