"The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison."
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Quote collection
Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes (page 1 of 35)
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"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."
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"Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."
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"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for."
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"When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness."
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"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."
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"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. When he has 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 - lying to others and to yourself."
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"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
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"Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever."
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"Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."
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"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."
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"And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . ."
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"It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise."
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"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."
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"The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!"
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"The soul is healed by being with children."
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"It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently."
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"I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."
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"You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day."
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"Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again."
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