Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
Search Quotes Search Sages Search Chapters

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский

1821 – 1881 CE

One of history’s most influential novelists and one of the greatest psychologists in world literature; Dostoyevsky led a tortured life that included being arrested for discussing banned books, being sentenced to death, spending 4 years in a Siberian prison camp, 6 years of forced/exiled military service, and struggling with a gambling addiction that made him have to beg for money. His second wife who he met when she was 19 and he 25 years older, helped turn his life around and produce some of the world’s best literature. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and he was admired by Hermann Hesse, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Kafka and Sartre. Albert Einstein called him a "great religious writer,” Nietzsche “among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life", Sigmund Freud called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written,“ and Virginia Woolf said, "Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.” His influence in modern time extends to the existentialists, surrealists, and the Beat generation.

Eras

Sources

Brothers Karamatzov

Unlisted Sources

Little Pictures on the Road

Notes From Underground (1864)

The Idiot, 1868

Think for Yourself

Quotes by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (68 quotes)

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Meaningfulness

Comments: Click to comment

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Lies Integrity

Comments: Click to comment

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Love

Comments: Click to comment

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

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“The world says: ‘Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.’ This is the worldly doctrine of today and they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Love both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. and you will perceive the mystery of God in all until you come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Beauty God

Comments: Click to comment

“Almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Fear Conformity

Comments: Click to comment

“Respect alone isn’t enough for a happy marriage!”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Marriage

Comments: Click to comment

“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Freedom

Comments: Click to comment

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Everything passes, only truth remains.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Truth Change

Comments: Click to comment

“For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Deception

Comments: Click to comment

“miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist... if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own sense than admit the fact.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Magic

Comments: Click to comment

“socialism is not merely the labor question, it is above all things the atheistic question, the question of the tower of Babel built without God to bring heaven down to earth.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Socialism

Comments: Click to comment

“men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I have done God's will on earth.'”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Happiness

Comments: Click to comment

“all these punishments reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the increase.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Punishment Crime

Comments: Click to comment

“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can purchase the whole world with it”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Love

Comments: Click to comment

“an original is in most cases the very essence of what is particular and apart from the commonalty”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Creativity

Comments: Click to comment

“When he realizes that he is responsible to all men for all and for everything, for all human sins, communal and individual, only then will the purpose of a monk’s solitude be realized”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“When our hearts grow soft with infinite, universal, unquenchable love and we realize that each one of us is responsible for all of mankind and for every individual person, we will have the power to win over the whole world.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Victory Power Love

Comments: Click to comment

“With a cruel analysis that focused on the parts but overlooked the whole, science and intellectuals have left nothing of all that was sacred of old.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: God

Comments: Click to comment

“Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Compassion

Comments: Click to comment

“We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Evil

Comments: Click to comment

“People are more convinced than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet… now it is ended and over for good.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Freedom

Comments: Click to comment

“Nothing has been more insupportable for man and human society than freedom… and what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread?”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Materialism

Comments: Click to comment

“The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Meaningfulness

Comments: Click to comment

“Since the beginning of time, the craving for community of worship remains as the main cause of our suffering. For that we’ve killed and tortured each other, said ‘Put away your gods and worship ours or we will kill you and your gods.’”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“All that people seek on earth is someone to bow down to, someone to hand their conscience to, and some means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious ant-heap.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Control

Comments: Click to comment

“For their happiness, we will seduce them into slavery with the rewards of an imagined but false heaven and eternity.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Slavery

Comments: Click to comment

“Life will bring you many misfortunes, but it is precisely in them you will find your happiness”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Happiness

Comments: Click to comment

“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Old Age

Comments: Click to comment

“Everyone strives to keep their individuality, to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for themselves; but instead of self-realization, this only results in impotence and complete isolation.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Everywhere these days, we have ceased to understand that we only find true security in social solidarity, not in isolated individual effort.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is subject to the senses.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Science

Comments: Click to comment

“The world has proclaimed freedom but what do we see in this? Our culture says, 'try to satisfy all of your desires and even multiply them' but what follows from this? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, dissatisfaction, envy, and crime.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“We are so habituated to satisfying our innumerable, self-invented wants that we quickly sink into a kind of slavery, disunion, and isolation.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in all things.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Sacred World

Comments: Click to comment

“The stupider one is, the closer to reality. Intelligence is a knave, it wriggles and hides but stupidity is honest and straight-forward.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Paradox Reality

Comments: Click to comment

“If the evil doing of men moves you to indignation… understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evildoers who might have been saved by your light.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Evil

Comments: Click to comment

“Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. This is a great gift of God not given to many. Prize it.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Golden Rule Love

Comments: Click to comment

“You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Believe but what the heart doth say
No signs from Heaven come today.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Belief

Comments: Click to comment

“They have managed to accumulate a greater number of things but joy in the world has grown less… Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature for they thus engender in themselves many senseless and foolish desires, habits, and absurd fancies.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Wealth

Comments: Click to comment

“men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Projection

Comments: Click to comment

“in some cases, it’s more creditable to be carried away by an emotion that springs from a great love, however unreasonable. And this is even more true for youth. An always sensible young man is suspect and of little worth”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“If you know too much, you'll get old too soon.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Less is More

Comments: Click to comment

“Like very many men is such cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only he could fly away from this accursed place—he would be altogether regenerated”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“Only you must not be like everybody else, that’s all. Even if everyone else is one way, you be the only one not like that even if you are the only one.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: True Self

Comments: Click to comment

“If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“Better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent man!”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Punishment

Comments: Click to comment

“there is nothing higher or stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in after years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home... if we have only one good memory left in our hearts, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Themes: Memory Forget

Comments: Click to comment

“The soul is healed by being with children.”

Themes: Family

Comments: Click to comment

“Let other nations think of retribution and the letter of the law. We will cling to the spirit and the meaning—the salvation and reformation of the lost.”

from Brothers Karamatzov

Comments: Click to comment

“As long as man remains free, he stries for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.”

from Think for Yourself

Themes: Religion

Comments: Click to comment

“There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings”

Themes: Suffering

Comments: Click to comment

“Beauty will save the world.”

Themes: Beauty

Comments: Click to comment

“To bill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.”

from The Idiot, 1868

Themes: Aggression

Comments: Click to comment

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

Themes: Confusion

Comments: Click to comment

“It seems, in fact, as though the second half of man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.”

Themes: Karma

Comments: Click to comment

“One must first learn to live oneself before one blames others.”

from Notes From Underground (1864)

Comments: Click to comment

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others”

from Little Pictures on the Road

Themes: Lies

Comments: Click to comment

Quotes about Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (7 quotes)

“It is in Dostoevsky that we find our secret hearts revealed, and our secret longings understood”

Will Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
Philosophy apostle and popularizer of history's lessons
from Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

Comments: Click to comment

“The criminals with whom Dostoevsky associated were better than he was, because they were more self-respecting... he would have nothing to do with 'proper pride'; he would sin in order to repent and enjoy the luxury of confession... I agree with Nietzsche in thinking Dostoevsky's prostration contemptible.”

Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”
from History of Western Philosophy

Comments: Click to comment

“[Dostoevsky’s wife] had noticed that the one thing which offered any real hope of salvation—his literary production—never went better than when they had lost everything.... When his sense of guilt was satisfied by the punishments he had inflicted on himself, the inhibition on his work became less severe.”

Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 CE

Themes: Punishment

Comments: Click to comment

“Writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first-rate kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems.”

Colin Wilson 1931 – 2013 CE
from The Books In My Life, 1998

Comments: Click to comment

“Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.”

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“but after all and above all it depends on who is diseased, who mad, who epileptic or paralytic: an average dull-witted man, in whose illness any intellectual or cultural aspect is non-existent; or a Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky. In their case something comes out in illness what is more important and conductive to life and growth than any medical guaranteed health or sanity... in other words: certain conquests made by the soul and the mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit.”

Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955 CE
Deep, psychologically insightful author
from An Appeal to Reason (1930)

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“Dostoevsky, too, had lived a dismal and hard life. The czar sent him to a prison camp in Siberia in 1849. Dostoevsky was accused of writing socialist propaganda. He was eventually pardoned and wrote stories to ward off his creditors. Just like in the early '70s I wrote albums to ward off mine.”

Bob Dylan 1941 CE –

Comments: Click to comment

Comments (0)