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Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)

Dostoevsky was arrested at twenty-seven, sentenced to death, reprieved at the last minute in front of a firing squad, and sent to a Siberian labor camp for four years. He came back and wrote Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Notes from Underground. His characters are extreme. They murder, they confess, they rant about God at three in the morning. But they are not caricatures. They are the fullest portraits of human consciousness in all of fiction.

Concepts

absurd, agency, alienation, authenticity, conformity, escape, freedom, loneliness, love, meaning, totalitarianism

Quotes (14)

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep ...” — Crime and Punishment (1866)
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to ...” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life...” — Letters (1839)
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” — Crime and Punishment (1866)
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars. The deeper the grief, the close...” — Crime and Punishment (1866)
“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than f...” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so pain...” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: Make us you...” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“The soul is healed by being with children.” — The Idiot (1869)
“I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver h...” — Notes from Underground (1864)
“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than f...” — The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.” — Notes from Underground (1864)
“The soul is healed by being with children.” — The Idiot (1869)