... you can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress.
Fyodor DostoevskyThat's just the point: an honest and sensitive man opens his heart, and the man of business goes on eating - and then he eats you up.
Fyodor DostoevskyMan, 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 DostoevskyLet us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
Fyodor DostoevskyNothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky