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Crime and Punishment

Book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 50 quotes · Crime And Punishment, Men, Life

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Crime and Punishment Quotes

“Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!”

“I like it when people lie! Lying is man's only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie - you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that's honourable in its way; well, but we can't even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I'll kiss you for it.”

“I like people talking nonsense. Talking nonsense is humanity's only privilege over the rest of creation. If you talk nonsense, you'll find your way to the truth! Talking nonsense is what makes me human. No one ever found his way to the truth without first getting things wrong fourteen times, or even a hundred and fourteen times, and that's a good thing in its way; the trouble is we're not even capable of getting things wrong with our own brains! You can talk nonsense to me, if it's nonsense of your own, and I'll kiss you for it. Talking nonsense of your own-that's almost better than talking someone else's truth; in the first case you're human, in the second you're nothing but a parrot! Truth won't go away, but life can get choked up; we've seen that happen. Well, what are we now? In science, progress, thought, invention, ideals, desires, liberalism, judgement, experience, and all, all, all, all, all of it, we're every one of us, without exception, still stuck in the first, pre-preparatory class of high school! We've got fond of living off other people's ideas, and now we're addicted to it! Isn't that right? Isn't it?' cried Razumikhin, shaking and squeezing both ladies' arms. 'Isn't that so?”

“The first question he had been concerned with—a long time now—was why most crimes were so easily discovered and solved, and why nearly every criminal left so clear a trail. He arrived by degrees at a variety of curious conclusions, and, in his opinion, the chief cause lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime as in the criminal himself; nearly every criminal, at the moment of the crime, was subject to a collapse of will-power and reason, exchanging them for an extraordinary childish heedlessness, and that just at the moment when judgment and caution were most indispensable.”