# The Idiot - Author: [Fyodor Dostoyevsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky.md) - Quotes: 17 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot ## Quotes > ... the prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.''' [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/the-prince-says.md) > I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/i-have-never.md) > Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand. .. and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/nor-is-there.md) > It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/it-is-better.md) > I consider you the most honest and truthful of men, more honest and truthful than anyone; and if they say that your mind...that is, that you're sometimes afflicted in your mind, it's unjust. I made up my mind about that, and disputed with others, because, though you really are mentally afflicted (you won't be angry with that, of course; I'm speaking from a higher point of view), yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them. It's something, in fact, they have never dreamed of. For there are two sorts of mind: one that matters, and one that doesn't matter. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/i-consider-you.md) > '''A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/a-widow-the.md) > First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/first-of-all.md) > It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/its-easier-for.md) > It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. But what's the use of talking! I suspect that all I'm saying now is so like the usual commonplaces that I shall certainly be taken for a lower-form schoolboy sending in his essay on "sunrise", or they'll say perhaps that I had something to say, but that I did not know how to "explain" it. But I'll add, that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. But if I too have failed to convey all that has been tormenting me for the last six months, it will, anyway, be understood that I have paid very dearly for attaining my present "last conviction." This is what I felt necessary, for certain objects of my own, to put forward in my "Explanation". However, I will continue. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/it-wasnt-the.md) > Who consciously throws himself into the water or onto the knife? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/who-consciously-throws.md) > It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/it-was-evident.md) > To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/to-kill-someone.md) > Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/pass-by-us-and.md) > Humiliate the reason and distort the soul... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/humiliate-the-reason.md) > A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/a-fool-with.md) > Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/inventors-and-geniuses.md) > Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man... [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fyodor-dostoyevsky/the-idiot/lack-of-originality.md)