The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well — let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time — twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simplehearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia

“You have only to creep into a secluded corner or into a crocodile, to shut your eyes, and you immediately devise a perfect millennium for mankind.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Sometimes she put that question to her husband, and, as usual, she asked it hysterically, threateningly, expecting an immediate reply.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Collected Works: Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, and More! (10 Works): Russian Classic Fiction

“It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Collected Works: Crime and Punishment, Poor Folk, and More! (10 Works): Russian Classic Fiction

“Hm… yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia

“He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia

“I must tell vou, Gavril Ardalionovitch,” Mvshkin said suddenly, “that I was once so ill that I really was almost an idiot; but I’ve got over that long ago, and so I rather dislike it when people call me an idiot to my face. Though I can excuse it in you in consideration of your ill-luck, but in your vexation you’ve been abusive to me twice already. I don’t like that at all, especially so suddenly at first acquaintance; and so, as we are just at the crossroads, hadn’t we better part? You go to the right to your home, and I go to the left. I’ve got twenty-five roubles, and I shall be sure to find some lodging-house.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia

“(I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious).”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Novels, Short Stories, Memoirs & Letters of 19th-Century Russia

“There are people, gentlemen, who dislike roundabout ways and only mask themselves at masquerades. There are people who do not see man’s highest avocation in polishing the floor with their boots. There are people, gentlemen, who refuse to say that they are happy and enjoying a full life when, for instance, their trousers set properly. There are people, finally, who dislike dashing and whirling about for no object, fawning, and licking the dust, and above all, gentlemen, poking their noses where they are not wanted. . . I’ve told you almost everything, gentlemen; now allow me to withdraw.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Once a man has lost his self-respect, and has decided to abjure his better qualities and human dignity, he falls headlong, and cannot choose but do so. It is decreed of fate, and therefore I am not guilty in this respect.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“for it is precisely the humanity, affability, and brotherly compassion of a doctor which prove the most efficacious remedies for his patients.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“And how wounded she must have been by such suppositions! An inexhaustible love for him lay concealed in her heart in the midst of continual hatred”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“And one asks oneself where are one’s dreams. And one shakes one’s head and says how rapidly the years fly by! And again one asks oneself what has one done with one’s years. Where have you buried your best days? Have you lived or not? Look, one says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing. Some more years will pass, and after them will come gloomy solitude; then will come old age trembling on its crutch, and after it misery and desolation.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or acquaintance with whom to share his joy. Suddenly I had a most unexpected adventure.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul’s salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native village, and perhaps do both.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“What about the money?’ You might still have said to her, ‘He’s a degraded sensualist, and a low creature, with uncontrolled passions.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“People who saw something pensive and sullen in his eyes were startled by his sudden laugh, which bore witness to mirthful and lighthearted thoughts at the very time when his eyes were so gloomy.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings: Complete Psychological and Existential Works of 19th-Century Russia

“His wife and all the ladies of his family professed the very latest convictions, but in rather a crude form.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Ivan Ivanovitch flew into a terrible passion: “Yes, sir, I am a general, and a lieutenant-general, and I have served my Tsar, and you, sir, are a puppy and an infidel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“district”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky