Fyodor Dostoevsky
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.Collection: God
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.Collection: Women
Realists do not fear the results of their study.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Happiness
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.Collection: Great
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.Collection: Men
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.Collection: Good
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.Collection: Work
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.Collection: Love
A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.Collection: Money
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!Collection: Power
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.Collection: Hope
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.Collection: Happiness
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.Collection: Fear
If there is no God, everything is permitted.Collection: God
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
The soul is healed by being with children.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.Collection: Lying
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.Collection: Wisdom
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.Collection: Inspirational
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.Collection: Escaping
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!Collection: Good Night
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.Collection: Unhappy
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.Collection: Truth
When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.Collection: Moving On
If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.Collection: Overcoming
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.Collection: Caring
But how could you live and have no story to tell?Collection: Stories
To think too much is a disease.Collection: Thinking
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.Collection: Love
You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.Collection: Spiritual
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.Collection: Love
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.Collection: Love
Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.Collection: Feet
There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.Collection: Healing
Everything passes, only truth remains.Collection: Remains
The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. 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.Collection: Suicide
Above all, don't lie to yourself.Collection: Respect
If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.Collection: Confidence
People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.Collection: Men