Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Russia
11 Nov 1821 // 9 Feb 1881
Writer
11 Nov 1821 // 9 Feb 1881
Writer
Texts
Next >>Vanity as a Submission and Self-Suppression (1)
It may be asked, how is one to account for such vanity? How does it arise, in spite of complete insignificance, in pitiful creatures who are forced by their social position to know their place? Perha...
To Love Others Like Yourself (2)
The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the great thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth whi...
Without Love No One Can Conquer Anything (3)
Everything depends on the rightness and directness of one's motive, everything depends on love. Love is the basis of one's motive, the pledge of its strength. Love conquers cities. Without it no one ...
Vulgar Folly Men (4)
(...) There are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity, who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be,...
The Importance of Being Alone (5)
To be alone is a natural need, just like drinking and eating; otherwise, with this communism forced on him, man comes to hate mankind. The company of men becomes poison and contamination, and it was ...
Activity and Happiness (6)
Our passion for some sort of activity reaches a point of feverish and uncontrollable impatience; we all long for some serious occupation, many of us are full of an ardent desire to do good, to be of ...
Is Such a Man Free? (7)
...Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in...
A Bit of Freedom (8)
Try an experiment and build a palace. Fit it out with marble, pictures, gold, birds of paradise, hanging gardens, all sorts of things... And step inside. Well, it may be that you would never wish to ...
Choose by Rule (9)
Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend on, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are ai...
The Bright Flame of Consciousness (10)
...There are moments when all the intellectual and spiritual faculties, painfully overstrained, seem suddenly to blaze with the bright flame of consciousness. At these times the troubled soul, langui...
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays