Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian philosopher, novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His Notes from Underground, a novella published in 1864, is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature.

Quotes

It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Evil
As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves.
I utter what you would not dare think.
So that if a man rejects God, he will have to worship an idol that may be made of wood, gold, or ideas. So those who think they don't need God are really just idol worshipers, and that's what we should call them. But there must be true atheists too; only they're much more dangerous because they come to us with the name of God on their lips . . . There are some people like that, my friends, and there should be.
Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

Miscellaneous
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.

Miscellaneous
Neither man or nation can exist without a sublime idea.

Ideas
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Miscellaneous
There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

Ideas, War & Peace