Famous Fyodor Dostoyevsky Quotations

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"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature, and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!"
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"If there is no God, everything is permitted."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering the prisons."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?"
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"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."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky


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