Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky Russian - Novelist November 11, 1821 - February 9, 1881

Notes from underground

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. Fyodor Dostoevsky

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation...

...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts. Fyodor Dostoevsky

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone. Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

---

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! Fyodor Dostoevsky

To live without Hope is to Cease to live. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. Fyodor Dostoevsky

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is no God, everything is permitted. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad. Fyodor Dostoevsky

To love someone means to see him as God intended him. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

To love someone means to see him as God intended him. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. Fyodor Dostoevsky

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about. Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The soul is healed by being with children. Fyodor Dostoevsky

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. Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer? Fyodor Dostoevsky

Realists do not fear the results of their study. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. Fyodor Dostoevsky

There 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 Dostoevsky

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death. Fyodor Dostoevsky

The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship. Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half. Fyodor Dostoevsky

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression. Fyodor Dostoevsky

If 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 Dostoevsky