Fyodor Dostoevsky: 25 Basic Rules of Life

“To love a man means seeing him as God intended him to be.”

Compassion is the most important and, perhaps, the only law of existence for all mankind.

Freedom is not about not restraining oneself. It is about having self-control.

There is a line in all things that is dangerous to cross; for it is impossible to turn back once you have crossed it.

Happiness is not a matter of being happy; rather, it is the process of achieving it.

It is necessary to love life more than to seek its meaning.

Life suffocates without purpose.

If you stop reading books, it means that you stop thinking.

There is no happiness in comfort; happiness is born of misery.

Beauty shall save the world.

If you are on your way to the goal and stop to throw stones at any dog that barks at you, you will never reach that goal.

Truth without love is a lie.

Seek love and accumulate love in your hearts. Love is so powerful that it makes us born again.

If you truly love, either jealousy will kill your love, or your love will kill jealousy.

It takes very little to destroy a man: just convince him that no one needs what he does.

It’s amazing what one ray of sunshine can do to a person’s soul!

You have to talk face to face… so as to be able to read the soul on the face, so as to make the heart reverberate in the sounds of the words. One word spoken with conviction, with full sincerity and without hesitation, face to face, means much more than dozens of sheets of written paper.

Children can heal one’s soul.

If you want to help, you can do a lot of good even with your hands tied.

My friend, remember that it is good, safe, and beautiful to keep quiet.

Just don’t lie to yourselves. Whoever lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to the point where he does not distinguish any truth in himself or around him, and therefore falls into disrespect for himself and others. He stops loving anybody, but in order to entertain himself while not having love, he surrenders himself to passions and rough delights, and reaches the point where he becomes like a beast in his own wickedness, and all this is due to his endless lying to people and himself.

Adults do not know that a child can offer extremely important advice even in the most difficult cases.

The mind is a scoundrel and will justify anything!

Don’t clog your memory with resentment, or there may simply be no room for beautiful moments in it.

I want at least one person to discuss all things as openly as I talk to myself.

To love a man means seeing him as God intended him to be.

Translated by The Catalogue of Good Deeds

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