Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–81) was a Russian novelist and journalist. He had a profound influence on succeeding Russian literature and thought. He is the most widely read and influential of all Russian authors.
Though known mainly as a journalist in his lifetime, Dostoyevsky’s enduring works were the novels in which he discerned the deep recesses of the human mind. In each Dostoyevsky novel, the criminal becomes an epitome of an unusually modern psychological condition of alienation and self-destruction.
Born in Moscow, Dostoyevsky entered the army as an engineer but quit to write in 1844. He was sentenced to death in 1849 for revolutionary activities but earned an acquittal just before execution. The imminence of death made a deep impression on him. He endured 10 years of exile, four at a labor camp working in chains in a log house, and six as a common soldier at a Siberian frontier post near the Mongolian border. He described the agonies he experienced in custody in The House of the Dead (1862.)
Dostoevsky developed a radical conservative philosophy anchored in his premise of humanity’s inherent depravity, the decay of the West, and a belief in Russian nationalism and simple Christianity.
Dostoevsky’s four legendary novels—Crime and Punishment (1866; Prestupleniye I Nakazaniye,) The Idiot (1868; Idiot,) The Possessed (1872; Besy,) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880; Brat’ya Karamazovy)—reveal his psychological insight, savage humor, and concern with the religious, political, and moral problems posed by human suffering.
Crime and Punishment is the story of Raskolnikov, a young intellectual in 19th century St. Petersburg, who is consumed with guilt after he kills a pawnbroker and her sister. The Idiot is the tale of Prince Myshkin, whose naive and trusting nature precipitates disaster for the people around him. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha come to represent three different responses to their inner conflict—the sensual, intellectual, and the religious—and only the last provides a satisfactory answer finally.
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We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 Dostoyevsky
Topics: Self-Discovery
Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Fresh, Prayer
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Forgiveness, Age, Aging
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 Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness, Blessings, Humanity
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 Dostoyevsky
Topics: Losers, Loss, Losing
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Truth
If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Awareness, Realization, Acceptance, Self-respect
To be too conscious is an illness – a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Sickness, Self-Discovery
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