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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The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Purpose
The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Habit, Habits
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Hope
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Civilization
Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The formula “two and two make five” is not without its attractions.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Reality
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
To be too conscious is an illness – a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Sickness, Disease, Self-Discovery
A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Purpose
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Atheism
Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Lies, Deception/Lying, Lying
At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Love
In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Romance
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Action, People, Fear, Courage
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Cynicism
You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Memory
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Praise
We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee (Jesus) and followed him (Satan.)
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Peace
Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Ideas
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Love
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Reality
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
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
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Gratitude
We are all happy, if we only knew it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness
Inventors and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning – and very often at the end – of their careers.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Beginnings
If you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may say with confidence that he is a good man.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Laughter
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
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: Blessings, Humanity, Happiness, Humankind
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Communication
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 easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Nationalities, Nationality, Nationalism, Nation
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is no fact that cannot be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Work
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