Quotes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

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

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

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.

Man is a pliant animal, a being who gets accustomed to anything.

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

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.

We are all happy, if we only knew it.

Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.

If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself.

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.

originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thoroughgoing illness.

Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

If you love all things, you will also attain the divine mystery that is in all things. For then your ability to perceive the truth will grow every day, and your mind will open itself to an all-embracing love.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no one can live.

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.

To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.