The quotations of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Russian novelist

1821–1881

55 quotes, most often on Love, Truth & Lies and God.

Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book II, Chapter 3 (trans. Constance Garnett)In context
- Love
Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book VI, Chapter 3: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima
- Children
- Love
If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
Letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), trans. Ethel Colburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71
Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand it.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), I
- Truth & Lies
I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), ch. V
- Truth & Lies
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III
- Love
Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Letter to his brother Mikhail (1839), as translated in Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971), p. 17
- Knowledge
- Philosophy
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
Crime and Punishment (1867), Part I, Chapter IIIn context
- Change
- Character
Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!… How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature!… And vile is he who calls him vile for that
Crime and Punishment (1867), Part II, Chapter VIIn context
- Life & Death
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
Crime and Punishment (1867), Part III, Chapter VIn context
- Emotion
- Intelligence
Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.
Crime and Punishment (1867), Part VI, Chapter IVIn context
- Truth & Lies
But that is the beginning of a new story⁠—the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
Crime and Punishment (1867), Epilogue, Chapter IIIn context
- Change
Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God.
The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering, Chapter IIIIn context
- Forgiveness
- God
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering, Chapter IVIn context
- Love
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering, Chapter IVIn context
- Truth & Lies

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