Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

The formula "two and two make five" is not without its attractions.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize the truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and others. When he had no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - to others and to yourself.

By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

Neither man or nation can exist without a sublime idea.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings of what? Of the truth , for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes , have seen it in all its glory .

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

... you can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

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.

Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.

The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.