Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) — Schriftsteller · Ostkirche · Russland
Fjodor Dostojewski (1821–1881) war ein russischer Schriftsteller und Denker, der nach Zwangsarbeit und Verbannung in Sibirien vor allem in Sankt Petersburg wirkte. In Romanen wie „Schuld und Sühne“ und „Die Brüder Karamasow“ erforschte er existenzielle Fragen von Schuld, Gewissen und Glauben, vertrat publizistisch jedoch auch nationalistische und antisemitische Positionen. Für Bibelleser bietet sein Werk eine tiefgründige Auseinandersetzung mit Willensfreiheit, Theodizee und der Suche nach Erlösung durch Christus inmitten menschlicher Abgründe.
Era: Revival & the 19th Century
Recurring topics: Love, Meaning & Identity, Ethical Questions, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Faith & Trust, Hope & Confidence, Joy & Gratitude, Grace & Redemption
Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
To love a person means to see them as God meant them to be.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I ask myself: what does hell mean? I maintain: it is the inability to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it—which is what matters most.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love all of God's creation... If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in all things.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Always choose love. Once you have decided for it once and for all, you will conquer the whole world. For serving love is a tremendous power, and there is nothing like it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
In my entire life, I have not yet met a truly godless person. Instead, I have only met the restless.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Such it is on earth: Every soul is tested and is also comforted.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
But you, love me even when I am dirty; for if I were washed white, everyone would love me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to guide us.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
As a mother rejoices when she sees her child's first smile, so God rejoices every time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner bowing before him in prayer with his whole heart.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What do you think it feels like for someone who has no one to pray for him?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Whoever wants to see the living God face to face should not seek him in the empty firmament of his thoughts, but in love for humankind.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The first marital love, of course, fades with time, but then another love comes, just as beautiful. Then souls draw closer.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love the animals: God has given them the beginnings of thought and untroubled joy. Do not disturb it, do not torment them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky—that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass 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, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Only every time that you weep be sure to remember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks down from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I know you don’t believe in it--but don’t be over-wise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid--the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It’s not time, but yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the meaning of it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Brother, let me ask one thing more: has any man a right to look at other men and decide which is worthy to live?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
266 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: researchgate.net
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