Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

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.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity

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

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

Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honor or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together, united by a good and a kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Memory

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

Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness

The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man, as a civilized being, can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Christianity

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: Aging, Forgiveness, Age

Realists do not fear the results of their study.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Reality

Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Ideas

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Civilization

We are all happy, if we only knew it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Happiness

To be too conscious is an illness – a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Sickness, Disease, Self-Discovery

Change is what people fear most.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Change

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

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Purpose

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

There is no fact that cannot be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
—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: Loss, Losers, Losing

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

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Hope

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Love

In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Miracles

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

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Topics: Communication

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

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