25 Soul-Stirring Quotes From Dostoevsky’s White Nights 

Ever read a book that felt like it was written with an aching tenderness? Dostoyevsky’s White Nights is one such book. It’s a quiet love letter for the ones who are lonely and broken. Fyodor Dostoevsky is known for writing books with morals, philosophy, and spirituality. However, this novella is different. It is soft yet heartbreaking.

Set beneath the soft glow of St. Petersburg’s sleepless summer sky, it tells the tale of a dreamer. A nameless, gentle man aching from his own torments, and a girl named Nastenka, whose sorrow mirrors his own. They meet by chance, speak for four nights, and part forever. Yet in that brief span, something eternal is felt. Let’s take a look at some of the soul-stirring quotes this precious gem of a book has given the world: 

Quotes On Longing

Longing is one of the major themes of White Nights. From every glance exchanged between the dreamer and Nastenka to the silence between them, yearning stretches endlessly. Here are some quotes that describe their pining perfectly: 

1. And I do nothing but dream every day that at last I shall meet someone. Oh, if only you knew how often I have been in love in that way. 
2. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year.
3. All that is left to say is how it would be if you loved me, only that, nothing more!
4. Then I would — I certainly would — have succeeded in making you love me; you know, you said yourself, Nastenka, that you almost loved me.
5. My love will be at last worthy of your love.. Will you take my hand?
6. because I love you so at this moment, because I am worthy of your love, because I will deserve it.

Quotes On Love

Dostoevsky portrays love in the most human way possible. It shows the mistakes we make and how it is never grand. It is quiet and mellow, and at times, it can leave you scarred for life. For the nameless narrator, love is both a discovery and a wound. Read a few quotes and this subject and you’ll know what we are talking about:

7. To love someone means to see them as God intended them.
8. Only I would love you, I would love you so, that even if you still loved him, even if you went on loving the man I don’t know, you would never feel that my love was a burden to you. You would only feel every minute that at your side was beating a grateful, grateful heart, a warm heart ready for your sake.. Oh Nastenka, Nastenka! What have you done to me?
9. I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.
10. Nastenka, you torture me! You wound my heart, you are killing me, Nastenka! I cannot be silent! I must speak at last, give utterance to what is surging in my heart!
11. Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka! 
12. I was thinking about you.
13. May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!

Quotes On Loneliness and Misery 

Dostoevsky does not just depict the main character’s solitude as physical isolation, but as a deep emotional and spiritual void — a silence that echoes even in the heart of a crowded city. He lives a life that is barely touched by others. If you are going through a similar phase in life, you will find these quotes relatable:

14. Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!
15. I had nowhere to go for the holidays and no reason to go away.
16. It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, anyone is entitled to ask who “everyone” was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg,I had hardly an acquaintance. 
17. Why, the lowest creature on earth is treated more compassionately.
18. I once shed tears over memories..
19. It has grown dark in the room; his soul is sad and empty; the whole kingdom of fancies drops to pieces about him, drops to pieces without a trace, without a sound, floats away like a dream, and he cannot himself remember what he was dreaming.
20. Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die and will fall like the yellow leaves from the trees.. Oh, Nastenka! you know it will be sad to be left alone, utterly alone, and to have not even anything to regret — nothing, absolutely nothing.. for all that you have lost, all that, all was nothing, stupid, simple nullity, there has been nothing but dreams.
21. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky.

Quotes On Heartbreak

Heartbreak is different in White Nights. It doesn’t make the protagonist smash and break things. It is a profound, voiceless devastation because from the moment he meets Nastenka, he falls in love with her. However, it’s not the end for the dreamer. He carries this heartbreak with him, always. 

22. Somehow I cannot help being reminded of a frail, consumptive girl, at whom one sometimes looks with compassion, sometimes with sympathetic love, whom sometimes one simply does not notice; though suddenly in one instant she becomes, as though by chance, inexplicably lovely and exquisite, and, impressed and intoxicated, one cannot help asking oneself what power made those sad, pensive eyes flash with such fire? What summoned the blood to those pale, wan cheeks? What bathed with passion those soft features? What set that bosom heaving? What so suddenly called strength, life, and beauty into the poor girl’s face, making it gleam with such a smile, kindle with such bright, sparkling laughter? You look round, you seek for someone, you conjecture…. But the moment passes, and next day you meet, maybe, the same pensive and preoccupied look as before, the same pale face, the same meek and timid movements, and even signs of remorse, traces of a mortal anguish and regret for the fleeting distraction…. And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because you had not even time to love her..
23. How she tore herself out of my arms and rushed to meet him! I stood and looked at them, utterly crushed. But she had hardly given him her hand, had hardly flung herself into his arms, when she turned to me again, was beside me again in a flash, and before I knew where I was she threw both arms round my neck and gave me a warm, tender kiss.
24. I felt that in my heart there was so much love for you, Nastenka, so much love! And it seemed so bitter that I could not help you with my love, that my heart was breaking.
25. My tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow — they don’t hurt anybody. They will dry, Nastenka.

Conclusion 

These quotes from the White Nights book As a bibliophile, I’ve read White Nights twice, and each time I have been reminded by Dostoevsky that the most poignant moments in life are often those that are brief, unspoken, and filled with the tension between what we desire and what we can never fully possess.