These Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love will inspire you and remind you to follow your dreams.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on 11 November 1821 was a Russian novelist, philosopher, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky’s literary works cover human psychology in the unsettled social, spiritual and political atmospheres of 19th-century Russia.
Dostoyevsky’s life was filled with ups and downs. After his mother’s death, Dostoyevsky left school to join the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. He managed to create a thriving career as an engineer for himself and enjoyed a side hustle translating books.
Dostoevsky started writing at the age of 20 and published his first novel at the age of 25 which was titled ‘Poor Folk’ (1846). His works of fiction include 15 novels and novellas, 17 short stories, and 5 translations. Some of his famous work includes ‘Poor Folk’, ‘Crime And Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, ‘White Nights’, ‘Notes From Underground’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov‘.
Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, for that he was sentenced to death but somehow the sentence was commuted at the last moment.
After released from prison, he worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own. Later, he started traveling around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led him to financial hardship. There was a time in his life when he had to beg for money but eventually, he became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.
He has been an inspiration to a number of Russian writers and philosophers. Here we are sharing some Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes about love for you to inspire you to pursue your dreams no matter how hard it is.
Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love, The Brothers Karamazov
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love a man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love, The Brothers Karamazov
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky Crime And Punishment Quotes
“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there – that is living.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering…”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Beauty will save the world”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The Idiot Dostoevsky Quotes
“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated
“Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights
White Nights Dostoevsky Quotes
“There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one’s idea for thirty-five years; there’s something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it, you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons
“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
“We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoevsky Notes From Underground Quotes
“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights
“And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink…. I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Best Dostoevsky Demons Quotes
“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it … one must have the courage to dare.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
“Love all God’s creation, 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. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?” Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind “for every man must have somewhere to turn…”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Be not forgetful of prayer. 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 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky Quotes Notes From Underground
“Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Without God all things are permitted.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“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”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“They were like two enemies in love with one another.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“One can fall in love and still hate.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky Brothers Karamazov Quotes About Love
“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love
“There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Forgive me… for my love -for ruining you with my love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“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?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“One can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection, one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
“Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
“It’s the life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights
“Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky Famous Quotes On God
“It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn’t help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights and Other Stories
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you — and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Love life more than the meaning of it?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Do you feel inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s quotes about love?
We consider Dostoevsky as one of the greatest intellectual minds of his era. Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide variety of philosophers and authors including Augustine, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Plato, and many others.
Dostoevsky‘s novels and stories were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia. His books have also been translated into more than 170 languages. These Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes About Love have inspired many people and continue to do so.
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