More Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort.
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.
If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.
I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
The soul is healed by being with children.
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.
Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
