I read about a man who'd been sentenced to die, saying or thinking, the hour before his death, that even if he had to live an ocean somewhere high up on a rock… with all around precipices, an ocean, an endless murk, endless solitude and endless storms—and had to stand there, on those two feet of space, all his life, for a thousand years, eternity—that it would be better to live like that than to die so very soon! If only he could live, live, and live! Never mind what that life was like! As long as he could live!
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Originality and a feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Through error you come to truth. I am a man because I err. You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes, likely 114.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you—and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky