Pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not say, 'Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and hindering our good work from being done.' Fly from that dejection, children!
Fyodor DostoevskyIt's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
Fyodor DostoevskyReality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.
Fyodor DostoevskyFaith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.
Fyodor DostoevskyThere 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 DostoevskyA 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.
Fyodor DostoevskyI sometimes think love consists precisely of the voluntary gift by the loved object of the right to tyrannize over it.
Fyodor DostoevskyAlthough your mind works, your heart is darkened with depravity; and without a pure heart there can be no complete and true consciousness
Fyodor DostoevskyI may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.
Fyodor DostoevskyAll people seem to be divided into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The ordinary people must lead a life of strict obedience and have no right to transgress the law because?theyare ordinary.Whereas the extraordinary people have the right to commit any crime they like and transgress the law in any way just because they happen to be extraordinary.
Fyodor DostoevskyIf you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.
Fyodor DostoevskyTo achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.
Fyodor DostoevskyYou are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so put intellect above everything.
Fyodor DostoevskyOne must love life before loving its meaning ... yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us.
Fyodor DostoevskyI 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 DostoevskyAfter all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.
Fyodor DostoevskySince I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.
Fyodor DostoevskyThere 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.
Fyodor DostoevskyThere are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority.
Fyodor DostoevskyIn most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
Fyodor DostoevskyA new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort
Fyodor DostoevskyA 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.
Fyodor DostoevskyGrown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.
Fyodor DostoevskyIn the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.
Fyodor DostoevskyIf 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.
Fyodor DostoevskyWas it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it?
Fyodor Dostoevsky