Fyodor Dostoevsky

Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!

I sometimes think love consists precisely of the voluntary gift by the loved object of the right to tyrannize over it.

Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.

After all, bluff and real emotion exist so easily side by side.

You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.

At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world.

I have in my own life merely carried to the extreme that which you have never ventured to carry even halfway ; and what's more, you've regarded your cowardice as prudence, and found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that, in fact, I may be even more "alive" than you are. Do take a closer look!

They were like two enemies in love with one another.

Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.

One man doesn't believe in god at all, while the other believes in him so thoroughly that he prays as he murders men!

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.

I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.

Every ant knows the formula of its ant-hill, every bee knows the formula of its beehive. They know it in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula.

We are all happy if we but knew it.

Or renounce life altogether! Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love.

When reason fails, the devil helps!

Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.

If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.