FastSaying

... I retraced my steps, walked up to her, and in another moment would have certainly said, "Madam!" if I had not known that that exclamation had been made a thousand times before in all Russian novels of high life. It was that alone that stopped me.


Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY But how could you live and have no story to tell?
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then sudde...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considere...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY In place of the clear and rigid ancient law, You [oh Lord] made man decide about good and evil for h...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY If God does not exist, then everything is permitted
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of lo...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you we...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY If you chase several hares at once, you won't overtake any one of them.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Not long ago I was much amused by imagining—what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with th...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY The high road is something very, very long, of which one cannot see the end - like human life, like ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suff...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of etern...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY ..., and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometimes be the means o...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and soli...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to reason can avoid such ques...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appea...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY There are some people about whom it is difficult to say anything which would describe them immediate...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Science which has become a great power in the lastcentury, has analyzed everything divine handed dow...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God s...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Without a firm idea of himself and the purpose of his life, man cannot live, and would sooner destro...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Innovators and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very of...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Отцы и учители, мыслю: "что есть ад?" Рассуждаю
так: "С...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

Answer: Of himself.

Wel...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY It's like this,' began the elder. 'All these sentences of hard labour in Siberian prisons, and forme...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Life [had] replaced logic.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY