Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes - Page 2

Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.

originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

We are all happy if we but knew it.

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.

Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!

Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.

The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

Without God all things are permitted.

Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.

We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?

Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today - gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

And indeed man has invented God. And the strange thing, the wonderful thing, is not that God really does exist, but that an idea like that - the idea of God's necessity - could find its way into the head of a savage and vicious animal such as man, so sacred is it, that idea, so touching, so exceedingly wise and so greatly to his honour.

I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!

What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.