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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

13 free books by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 11 you can read right here.

Born 1821 in Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor · Died 1881 in Saint Petersburg

writer, novelist, essayist · Russian Empire · associated with literary realism

Notable works: Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov

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Facts from Wikidata (Q991), retrieved 2026-09-26.

Also by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: read here

Short stories and shorter works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Quotes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s books

Verified word for word in the text: each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. How RedLectern is built.

The Brothers Karamazov

From Project Gutenberg e-text #28054 (public domain in the USA).

I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father ZossimaRead in context →

The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.

— Spoken by a character · IV. A Lady Of Little Faith

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The Idiot

From Project Gutenberg e-text #2638 (public domain in the USA).

‘beauty would save the world’?

— Spoken by a character · III. I

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It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise!

— Spoken by a character · IV. I

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The Possessed: Or, The Devils

From Project Gutenberg e-text #8117 (public domain in the USA).

"He who teaches that all are good will end the world."

— Spoken by a character · I. NIGHT

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