"What is hell? I still maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground: with White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead)

"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 (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"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."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering..."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"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

"We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

"Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."
— 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 (The Brothers Karamazov)

"You can be sincere and still be stupid."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"To love someone means to see him as God intended him"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

"Indeed, people speak sometimes about the "animal" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Without God all things are permitted."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. 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. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. 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 (The Brothers Karamazov)

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground: with White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead)

"Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the PRIVACY of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"beauty will save the world"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

"To live without hope is to cease to live."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

"Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.
–The Grand Inquisitor"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"The soul is healed by being with children."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment -- still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I've not emptied it, and turn away -- where I don't know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything -- every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is until I am thirty."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

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

"You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder 'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"People sometimes talk about man's 'bestial' cruelty, but that is being terribly unjust and offensive to the beasts; a beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away.
That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"God knows what is in me in place of me."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot)

"The formula ‘two and two make five’ is not without its attractions."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the saints."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from the faith."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky