Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky

What is hell?...The suffering that comes from the consciousness that one is no longer able to love.

In abstract love of humanity one almost always only loves oneself.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

Everything passes, only truth remains.

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.

Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.

I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love.

Forgive me... for my love -for ruining you with my love.

He who desires to see the living God face-to-face should not seek him in the empty, firmament of his mind, but in human love.

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.

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

If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering — that is a fact.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing to be able to dare!

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.