Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · 1821–1881
Dostoevsky Quotes
Explore Fyodor Dostoevsky on love, freedom, truth and the contradictions of being human.
But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.
Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself.
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.
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.
To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it.
Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.
It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most....
They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.
Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.
In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home.
If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it.