Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it. Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don’t be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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 Dostoyevsky

A dream is a strange thing. Pictures appear with terrifying clarity, the minutest details engraved like pieces of jewelry, and yet we leap unawares through huge abysses of time and space. Dreams seem to be controlled by wish rather than reason, the heart rather than the head–and yet, what clever, tricky convolutions my reason sometimes makes while I’m asleep! Things quite beyond comprehension happen to reason in dreams!

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A few days earlier, in front of his guests at his own birthday celebration, this man had started smashing his own crockery and tearing his and his wife's clothes, because he was not offered enough vodka; then he went on to break every stick of furniture in his house and smash all the windows, and he did it all for the "beauty" of the gesture, as Mr. Karamazov had just now.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky