“Yes, the laws of self-preservation and of self-destruction are equally powerful in this world. The devil will hold his empire over humanity until a limit of time which is still unknown. You laugh? You do not believe in the devil? Scepticism as to the devil is a French idea, and it is also a frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do you know his name? Although you don't know his name you make a mockery of his form, following the example of Voltaire. You sneer at his hoofs, at his tail, at his horns—all of them the produce of your imagination! In reality the devil is a great and terrible spirit, with neither hoofs, nor tail, nor horns; it is you who have endowed him with these attributes! But… he is not the question just now!”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - “Yes, the laws of self-preservation...” 1

Similar quotes

“What's worse ...?The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do?”

Jodi Picoult
Read more

“You can know a man by his devils and the way he gives hurts.”

Saul Bellow
Read more

“Man provides his own goods and his own evils, neither God nor the Devil has anything to do with it.”

Ariana Franklin
Read more

“the Devil danced all over the place in his beautiful eyes. You never knew what kind of surprise he had for you, just to make you laugh.”

Dorothea Benton Frank
Read more

“I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.”

Joseph Conrad
Read more