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Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Life

More quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.