To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Service | Work | Women
If God does not exist, everything is permissible.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Atheism
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Happiness
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Character | Laughter
If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Eternity | Believing
To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hope
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Worship | Freedom
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reasoning
Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Happiness
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Good and Evil | Beauty | The Heart
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Happiness
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Humility | Power
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Habits | Life
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fear
The soul is healed by being with children.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
ChildrenHealing
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Happiness
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
Character
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Preaching
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Humility | Foolishness
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride | Modesty
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reasoning
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Praise
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lying
A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Money
The formula ‘Two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky