Fyodor Dostoevsky

“To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.”

“Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.”

“Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”

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

“The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”

“Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.”

“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.”

“Я человек больной... Я злой человек. Непривлекательный я человек.”

“...что слишком сознавать — это болезнь, настоящая, полная болезнь.”

“Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?”

“When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?”

“The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”

“The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions.”

“To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.”

“... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.”

“And now once again I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I could not answer, that is to say, again, for the hundredth time, I answered that I hated her.”

“Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?”

“A 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.”

“All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.”

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.”

“Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.”

“"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."”

“Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.”

“Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.”

“If not reason, then the devil.”

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.”

“The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.”

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

“To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.”

“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”