Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Фёдоръ Миха́йловичъ Достое́вскій) is considered one of the greatest Russian writers of all time. Some would assert that either The Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment is the greatest novel ever written.
In his five-volume masterpiece on the famed novelist, Joseph Frank commented: “Dostoevsky was to say…that the problem of the existence of God had tormented him all his life; but this only confirms that it was always emotionally impossible for him ever to accept a world that had no relation to a God of any kind” – Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal 1850-1859 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 43.
The following are several of my favorite quotes excerpted from Dostoevsky’s novels:
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“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.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars; the deeper the grief, the closer is God!” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
“Dostoevsky was a passionate man and had many falls and mistakes. But he is remembered as one who, being a thoroughly ‘modern’ man who had come to see the ‘one thing needful’ in life, offered a sincere struggle against his passions and helped us all to see more clearly the nature of the workings of passion and sin in fallen humanity.”
“Elder Ambrose of Optina said of Dostoevsky, after he visited the monastery, that he was ‘one who is repenting.’ Thus he is closer to today’s Orthodox converts than many more perfect men, such as the great Russian ascetics of the 19th century, and can help to open up to them the way to the saving truth of Orthodoxy. Above all, his compassionate portraits of the suffering and downtrodden, and even of those possessed by passions, can help Orthodox converts to develop the basic Christian concern and compassion which are so often lost sight of in our overly intellectual times” – Orthodox America (1981).
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