Quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

...to return to their native soil, as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.

Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it.Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don’t be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion.

Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.

Then this God does exist according to you?He does not exist, but He is. In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone is the pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. He who will conquer pain and terror will become himself a god.

Murderer! he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence. The man did not look at him.What do you mean... what is... Who is a murderer? muttered Raskolnikov hardly audibly.You are a murderer, the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Raskolnikov’s pale face and stricken eyes.

People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.

And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking into these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!

Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?

Dreams, as we all know, are very curious things: certain incidents in them are presented with quite uncanny vividness, each detail executed with the finishing touch of a jeweller, while others you leap across as though entirely unaware of, for instance, space and time. Dreams seem to be induced not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what clever tricks my reason has sometimes played on me in dreams!

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?Again I dont understand, Alyosha interrupted, Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy.

Man does not live by bread alone.

Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like, Porfiry Petrovitch began again, but I cant resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it.

For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

A few days earlier, in front of his guests at his own birthday celebration, this man had started smashing his own crockery and tearing his and his wifes clothes, because he was not offered enough vodka; then he went on to break every stick of furniture in his house and smash all the windows, and he did it all for the beauty of the gesture, as Mr. Karamazov had just now.

Beauty will save the world.

The need for beauty and the [artistic] creation which embodies it is inseparable from man, and without it man would possibly not want to live in the world.