Raskolnikov 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

“I simply don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”

Now that it’s all over and done with and we are quite happy again—I can tell you.

“If you reach a line you won’t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it, maybe you will be still unhappier....”

“Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,”

“I really don’t know what drew me to her then—I think it was because she was always ill. If she had been lame or hunchback, I believe I should have liked her better still,”

There is one expression, ‘blame yourselves’ put in very significantly and plainly, and there is besides a threat that he will go away at once if I am present.

In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander me and to raise dissension between us.

He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough.

“Come, that’s capital,” he said to Sonia, going back and looking brightly at her. “God give peace to the dead, the living have still to live. That is right, isn’t it?”

“I have been meaning to buy a lock for these two years. People are happy who have no need of locks,” he said, laughing, to Sonia.

So they don’t care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs.

Come, strike me openly, don’t play with me like a cat with a mouse.

“In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals—more or less, of course.”

“The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future.”

“The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal.”

“One in ten thousand perhaps—I speak roughly, approximately—is born with some independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand.

“The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions.

“And, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly difficulties and hardship or for some service to humanity—to overstep obstacles?... For instance, to rob and murder?”

And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did know!

“No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all.”

“I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the ‘happiness of all.‘”

I didn’t ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that they exist.”

“Perhaps I’ll get married instead of the journey. They’re making a match for me.”

“At last I shook my fist in his ugly face, and told him as a cousin I’d brain him.”

“We can thrash them afterwards, but let’s laugh at them now!”

“He was fairly cheerful and at ease, and quite hopes that we shall become friends.”

He assured me that his passion for you was a passing infatuation, now he has no feeling for you.

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

“It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s true,”

“and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

“I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!”

“No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you.”

“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.

It’s all nonsense, my friend, you are pretending, to scare me! You’ve no proofs and the man I saw had no real existence. You simply want to make me lose my head, to work me up beforehand and so to crush me.

“You know perfectly well that the best policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to conceal as little as possible.”

“But we shall meet again. If it’s God’s will, we may see a great deal of one another.”

“Forgive me for my evil thoughts, and my slander.”

“I told you yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I’ve said is to ask forgiveness....”

“I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left.”

“that’s not it! Better... imagine—yes, it’is certainly better—imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity.

“At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles.

“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?

“He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right!

“You turned away from God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!”

“Then God will send you life again. Will you go, will you go?”

“We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!”

“With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dounia, as well as to Sonia,” he muttered bitterly.

“What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”

“I ask you the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don’t you take me to prison?”

It would be hateful and difficult for you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an atmosphere to suit you.

The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant.

There are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul of man as in Petersburg.

Above all, vanity, pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities too....

A special little theory came in too—a theory of a sort—dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons, that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that is.

He has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law, and so he is not a man of genius.

“Don’t be angry with me, Rodya, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not crying.

“No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will reach Him.”

When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us simply by being with us

No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart ached!

And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what I would do!

What did he care for all those trials and hardships!

Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself!