Quote

And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better — cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Age: 60 †
Born: 1821
Born: January 1
Died: 1881
Died: January 1
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Poet
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Dostoievski
Fyodor Dostoievski
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoievski
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Well
Indeed
Question
Asks
Sufferings
Suffering
Exalted
Point
Cheap
Happiness
Idle
Better
Account
Wells
Accounts

More quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Image
I almost do not exist now and I know it God knows what lives in me in place of me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Beggars, especially noble beggars, should never show themselves in the street they should ask for alms through the newspapers. It's still possible to love one's neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
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?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
The perpetration of a crime is accompanied by illness!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
I want to suffer so that I may love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Catch several hares and you won't catch one.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Image
A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.
Fyodor Dostoevsky