n writer of novel
s, short stories
and essay
s. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment
, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov
.
His name has been variously transcribed in English, his first name sometimes being rendered as Theodore. This is because, before the post-revolutionary orthographic reform which, amongst other things, replaced the cyrillic letter Ѳ ('th') with the cyrillic letter Ф ('f'), Dostoyevsky's name was written Ѳеодоръ (Theodor) Михайловичъ Достоевскій.
Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society.
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ|Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.
If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.
I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased.
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.