Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have no self-respect. But can a man of acute sensibility respect himself at all?

Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.

In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.

Don't be overwise; 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.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

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

Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

One must love life before loving its meaning ... yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning can console us.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.

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.

Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Grand Inquisitor

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

Atheism: It seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by Christ, but by force.

Life is what matters, life alone - the continuous, eternal process of discovering life - and not the discovery itself.

We have all lost touch with life, we all limp, each to a greater or lesser degree.

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

Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That's the way to get on in life.

Life is in ourselves and not in the external.