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Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes about Life

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What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love, Life, Suffering
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY (1952). “GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD”

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 Dostoevsky
Life, Beautiful, Memories

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Hate, Love Is
"The Brothers Karamazov". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1879 - 1880.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love, Life, Respect
"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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
Life, Men, Second Chance
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “The Possessed: Dostoevsky's Collections”, p.238, 谷月社

Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Love Is, People
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2002). “The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue”, p.52, Macmillan

Taking a new step. . .is what people fear most.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Inspirational, Life, Fear

Man is stupid, phenomenally stupid.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Stupid, Men
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky”, p.116, Modern Library

They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Heart, Infinite
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2014). “The 10 Greatest Books of All Time”, p.535, Google Publishing

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Men, Keys
"Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Eye, Men

... what you need more than anything in life is a definite position.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Needs, Position
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “Crime and Punishment”, p.574, First Avenue Editions

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Ideas, World
"The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

The consciousness of life is higher than life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Consciousness, Life Is
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gary Saul Morson, Kenneth Lantz (2009). “A Writer's Diary”, p.394, Northwestern University Press

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Love You, Love Is
"The Brothers Karamazov". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Book II, ch. 3, 1879 - 1880.

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Suffering, Earth
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, III, 1877.

Life had stepped into the place of theory.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Theory
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections”, p.484, 谷月社

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Philosophy, Men
"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Men, Answers
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2018). “White Nights and Other Stories”, p.71, Youcanprint

After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Order, Alive

The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Chiefs, Wanted
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, (Ch. V), 1877.

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Dream, Memories
Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections”, p.46, 谷月社

And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolations that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless creature; and a man of character, a man of action - an essentially limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am forty now, and forty years - why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the deepest of old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral!

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life, Character, Men

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