Porfiry Petrovich Quotes

“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?

“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.”

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

“In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?”

“And to be sure you’re right: God has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon;”

“Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life, and what tricks it can play!”

“He will lie—that is, the man who is a special case, the incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion;”

“You must soothe and comfort them and you do nothing but frighten them...”

I understand what it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud, imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment!

You may think what you like, but I desire now to do all I can to efface that impression and to show that I am a man of heart and conscience.

He is innocent and responsive to influence. He has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him.

And he stole, too, then, without knowing it himself, for ‘How can it be stealing, if one picks it up?’

And I have myself admitted candidly several times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from that I have as yet nothing against you.

“Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, don’t put too much faith in words, perhaps prison will not be altogether a restful place.

I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!”

But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you.

“No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for you’ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he’ll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life.