Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

When reason fails, the devil helps!

We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.

I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.

And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!

A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment-- as well as prison.

Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser?

Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.

Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.

In flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.

Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.

“I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born.”

“For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never, under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the moon-should I care or not?”

“Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!”

“A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?”

“The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the great thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted.”

“I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”

“I love all those who laugh at me more than any of the rest.”

“And yet, you know, all are making for the same goal, all are striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads.”

“Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth!”

“I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing.”

“They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent.”

“If once one has recognised the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake.”

“I lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words but with tears.”

“And of course I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make mistakes?”

“If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many they were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”

“You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me.”

“I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and feel shame at my actions.”

“Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love.”

“I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now, what shall I be later on?”

“Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time.”

“It was the exercise of my power that attracted me most.”

“It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent.”

“Here it is, here it is at last, the encounter with reality. . . . All is lost now!”

“Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything.”

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. ”

“ ‘Ha, ha, ha! Next you’ll be finding pleasure in a toothache!’ you will exclaim, laughing. ‘And why not? There is also pleasure in a toothache,’ I will answer.”

“Who wants to want according to a little table?”

“I sensed vaguely that she was going to pay dearly for it all. . . .”

“The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one.”

“If anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once—that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving any one.”

“You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn’t it?”

“I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.”

“But as soon as he had uttered his foolish tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been talking nonsense.”

“It’s easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there.”

“He longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness.”

“Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you.”

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.”

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”

“Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.”

“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”

“For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.”

“He was well aware of his own considerable abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit.”

“The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”

“I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”

“Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity.”

“I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.”

“He was so carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment almost believing it himself.”

“Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing?”

“I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office... I was overcome by a sort of paralysis; but this was pleasant and good for me. On returning home I deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind. ”

“One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window – and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’ ”

“And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing.”

“In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of course, was a great help – exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But at times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me.”

“What I was afraid of was that everyone present, from the insolent marker down to the lowest little stinking, pimply clerk in a greasy collar, would jeer at me and fail to understand when I began to protest and to address them in literary language. For of the point of honour – not of honour, but of the point of honour – one cannot speak among us except in literary language. You can’t allude to the “point of honour” in ordinary language. I was fully convinced (the sense of reality, in spite of all my romanticism!) that they would all simply split their sides with laughter.”

“I would rather my hand were withered off than bring one brick to such a building! […] Perhaps the thing I resented was, that of all your edifices there has not been one at which one could not put out one’s tongue. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off out of gratitude if things could be so arranged that I should lose all desire to put it out. ”

“Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that! ”

“Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. ”

“Once, indeed, I did have a friend. But I was already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him; I tried to instill into him a contempt for his surroundings; I required of him a disdainful and complete break with those surroundings. I frightened him with my passionate affection; I reduced him to tears, to hysterics. He was a simple and devoted soul; but when he devoted himself to me entirely I began to hate him immediately and repulsed him – as though all I needed him for was to win a victory over him, to subjugate him and nothing else. But I could not subjugate all of them; my friend was not at all like them either, he was, in fact, a rare exception.”

“I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way. […] I tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In the depth of my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint stir of mockery […], and it was all from ennui, […]; inertia overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded.”

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. ”

“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

“And what’s strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.”

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.”

“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

“Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”

“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular.”

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself.”

“I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”

“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”

“The world says: “You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.” This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

“They were like two enemies in love with one another.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

“His mind and heart were flooded with extraordinary light; all torment, all doubt, all anxieties were relieved at once, resolved in a kind of lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope, full of understanding and the knowledge of the ultimate cause of things.”

“There’s more wealth, but there’s less strength; the binding idea doesn’t exist anymore; everything has turned soft, everything is rotten, and people are rotten.”

“What is in all this beauty for me when every minute, every second I am obliged, forced to know that even this tiny gnat, buzzing near me in the sunlight now, is taking part in all this banquet and chorus, knows its place in it, loves it, and is happy, and I alone am an outcast.”

“I don’t understand how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it! Or to speak with a man and not be happy in loving him? There are so many things at every step so beautiful.”

“Why, he knows everything- Lebedev knows everything!”

“I knew nothing then, and know still less now.”

“But what sort of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that I’m considered an idiot?”

“They snapped words over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts worn by persons condemned to death.

“His Majesty had spared us our lives.”

“It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of.”

“But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.”

With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing.

“If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I were really going to do it?”

“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness,”

“What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome!—and for a whole month I’ve been....”

“All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it all to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread—and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!”

“Just what I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense experience, sir,”

“Does not my heart ache to think what a useless worm I am?”

“Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you will get nothing by it.

You know, for instance, beforehand with positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he? For he knows of course that I shan’nt pay it back.

“Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere!

Excuse me, young man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not can you but dare you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a pig?

Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education.

Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man ought to have at least one place where people feel for him!

She had not any dresses... none at all, but she got herself up as though she were going on a visit; and not that she’d anything to do it with, she smartened herself up with nothing at all, she’ d done her hair nicely, put on a clean collar of some sort, cuffs, and there she was, quite a different person, she was younger and better looking.

“Not on earth, but up yonder... they grieve over men, they weep, but they don’ blame them, they don’ blame them!”

And He will say, ‘Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once.... I have forgiven thee once.... Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much....’

And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!’

“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”

But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it?

Do you still say your prayers, Rodya, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer?

Remember, dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days.

Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it.

‘You are our one comfort, you are everything to us.’

“It needs time and care to get to know a man,”

“What really matters is not the stinginess, is not the meanness, but the tone of the whole thing.”

“That’s how it always is with these Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last moment, they hope for the best and will see nothing wrong, and although they have an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won’t face the truth till they are forced to;”

For one she loves, for one she adores, she will sell herself!

Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be happy!

So he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it.

“looking like ladies and refined”

“Oh shameful wretches, they won’t let me alone!”

“They are drunken and foolish, they are in fun; come away, don’t look!”

“What are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?” shouted an old man in the crowd.

“He put his arms round his father but he felt choked, choked.”

“Good God!” he cried, “can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open... that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood... with the axe.... Good God, can it be?”

“I knew that I could never bring myself to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now?”

“Lord, show me my path—I renounce that accursed... dream of mine.”

“But what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself tidy enough to give lessons... hm...

“Don’t you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!”

“You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy....”

“Yes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like a soldier dressed up, but you know she is not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured face and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof of it is that lots of people are attracted by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature, ready to put up with anything, always willing, willing to do anything. And her smile is really very sweet.”

“I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You understand? You understand?”

“Why are you lying like a log?” she shouted, looking at him with repulsion.

“It’s red, and on red blood will be less noticeable,”

“I’m studying the law you see! It’s evident, e-vi-dent there’s something wrong here!”

“Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!”

“So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself,”

For whole days together he’s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell you. It’s past ten.

“He’s taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!”

“If I’m lost, I am lost, I don’t care! Shall I put the sock on?”

“Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray myself! Hm... it’s a pity there’s no air here,” he added, “it’s stifling.... It makes one’s head dizzier than ever... and one’s mind too...”

“What do you want?” he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.

“Be silent! You are in a government office. Don’t be impudent, sir!”

“But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so.”

“The idea of squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon him!”

“I am a poor student, sick and shattered by poverty.”

“Fling them into the canal, and all traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end.”

“I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!”

“It is because I am very ill,” he decided grimly at last, “I have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not worry.... But what if I don’t get well at all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!”

Very interesting to know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance?

“Stop, stop! You queer fish.”

“Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could help... to begin... because you are kinder than anyone—cleverer, I mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all... no one’s services... no one’s sympathy. I am by myself... alone. Come, that’s enough. Leave me alone.”

And please don’t think I am doing you a service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it’s bound to be a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse. Will you take it?”

“Take it, my good man, in Christ’s name.”

“You’ve eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You’ve been trudging about all day, and you’re shaking with fever.”

“I am always knocking my head. You call this a lodging!

When you decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you.

And that promise of marriage when her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive?.. I know all about it! But I see that’s a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me.

But, talking of foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly so foolish as you would think at first sight?”

“But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially, essentially an unaccountable character!

“But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don’t understand it!”

“It was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost a beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,”

“I see, brother,” he said a moment later, “that I have been playing the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my chatter, and I believe I have only made you cross.”

“What does it mean? Am I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I remember; I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I’ve no boots. They’ve taken them away! They’ve hidden them! I understand!”

“They think I am ill! They don’t know that I can walk, ha-ah-a! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it!”

“he has forgotten. I fancied then that you were not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You really look much better. First-rate! Well, to business. Look here, my dear boy.”

“I did not go empty- handed— they took the size from this monster. We all did our best.”

“And now, brother, let me change your linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness with your shirt.”

“Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles, as it were by springs; you won’t venture to turn round on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that’s the only principle I go upon. Zametov is a delightful person.”

“And I wouldn’t give more than one for you. No more of your jokes! Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him not repel him. You’ll never improve a man by repelling him, especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don’t understand. You harm yourselves running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have something in common.”

“Why, it’s all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of a mess! Though indeed there’s nothing to fear now. The matter is absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam.”

“What’s the most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying....”

But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!”

“Anyway, one can’t hold one’s tongue when one has a feeling, a tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only....”

“How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature—how can you fail to see the character of the man in the whole story?

one must take into consideration the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that cannot be denied.

“Too clever! No, my boy, you’re too clever. That beats everything.”

“Why, because everything fits too well... it’s too melodramatic.”

“whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected good-nature”

“I feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation,”

“A disgusting place—filthy, stinking and, what’s more, of doubtful character.

“Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his guardian.... A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet young people: one learns new things from them.”

“It’s ten years since I visited Petersburg. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have reached us in the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must be in Petersburg. And it’s my notion that you observe and learn most by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted...”

“Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,”

“and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands.”

“Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment.”

“Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudices have been rooted up and turned into ridicule....”

“Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!”

“I am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for sport, as that workman of yours said when he was scuffling with Dmitri, in the case of the old woman....”

He suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as though utterly unable to restrain himself.

to shout at them, to swear at them, to put out his tongue at them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!

“But all that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you’d make a slip. I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always reckon on himself, much less you and I.

“It means that I’m sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,”