Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky; 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 November 1821
CityMoscow, Russia
real heart punishment
I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.
degrees lost greater
We have all lost touch with life, we all limp, each to a greater or lesser degree.
father desire
Who doesn't desire his fathers death?
spring grief heart
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.
men animal adaptation
Man is a pliable animal, a being who gets accustomed to everything!
love dream persistence
... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.
pain feelings understanding
For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering.
remains
Everything passes, only truth remains.
men intelligent doe
How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?
heart self people
Nothing 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.
too-much consciousness sickness
I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.
suicide believe envy
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.
stupid punishment asking
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?
hate men self
As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.