General silence. Everyone’s eyes turned again to Stavrogin and Verkhovensky. ‘Verkhovensky, you have nothing to announce?’ the hostess asked directly. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he stretched in his chair and yawned. ‘However, I would like a glass of cognac.’ ‘Stavrogin, what about you?’ ‘No thank you, I don’t drink.’ ‘I’m not talking about cognac, but whether you want to speak or not.’ ‘Speak? About what?’ ‘You’ll be brought some cognac,’ she replied to Verkhovensky.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotes

Well, then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European Enlightenment is more important than people.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Do you understand that the Luzhin smartness is just the same thing as Sonia’s and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case, Dounia, it ’s a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Sonia it’s simply a question of starvation.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yesterday I was a fool; today I know better.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Beauty is very difficult to judge. I’m not ready for it yet. Beauty is a mystery.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She always laughed very gaily and sometimes even sincerely.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It was a sad and dismal day today, rainy, without a ray of hope, just like the long days of my old age which I know will be as sad and dismal.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

So let me tell you that in the last analysis, this world of God’s – I don’t accept it, even though I know that it exists, and I don’t admit its validity in any way. It isn’t God I don’t accept, you see; it’s the world created by Him, the world of God I don’t accept and cannot agree to accept.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No living man lives without some sort of goal and a striving towards it. Having lost both goal and hope, a man often turns into a monster from anguish...

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A true act of love, unlike imaginary love, is hard and forbidding. Imaginary love yearns for an immediate heroic act that is achieved quickly and seen by everyone. People may actually reach a point where they are willing to sacrifice their lives, as long as the ordeal doesn’t last too long, is quickly over – just like on the stage, with the public watching and admiring. A true act of love, on the other hand, requires hard work and patience, and, for some, it is a whole way of life.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But again the eternal question – what need is there of my humility? Can’t I simply be devoured without being expected to praise what devours me?

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

People. People. Endless noise. And I am so tired. And I would like to sleep under trees; red ones, blue ones, swirling passionate ones.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We mortals who dwell in pain and sorrow might with reason envy the birds of heaven which know not either!

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We have reached a stage at which we have surrounded ourselves with more things, but have less joy.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Though only a short while ago he had been for a moment overcome by a sudden longing for any sort of human companionship, he could not, at the first words addressed to him, restrain the all-to-familiar, unpleasant and irritating feeling of aversion for any stranger who tried to encroach on his privacy.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You’re very clever and learned, but you know nothing at all about life.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What if I were not to die! What if life were given back to me – what infinity! And it would all be mine! then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I took refuge in “the sublime and beautiful” – in my dreams, of course.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Unhappiness is an infectious disease. Poor and unhappy people ought to steer clear of one another, so as not to catch a greater degree of infection.

— Dostoyevsky Fyodor
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