133 quotes
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
The Idiot (1868)
Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.
Notes from Underground (1864)
If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
There is always an element of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian People, and without it their happiness is incomplete.
If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
The Insulted and the Injured (1861)
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The children of the sun, the children of their sun — oh, how beautiful they were!
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?
The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
Notes from Underground (1864)
Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it.
The Idiot (1868)
The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.
Notes from Underground (1864)
It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
The Idiot (1868)
Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)