Fiódor Dostoiévski

If 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.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it.

In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Inventors and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers.

In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.

It’s a burden to us even to be human beings—men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view.

Oh, if only I did nothing simply because of laziness.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Man, is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.

We have all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat .

Who doesn’t desire his father’s death?

They have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!

The world will be saved by beauty.

We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery , and authority . And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that brought them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts.

I agree that two times two is four is an excellent thing; but if we’re going to start praising everything, then two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.