Razumihin Quotes

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

“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!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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....”

“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?

“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”

“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.”

Though why shouldn’t you imagine? Don’t we talk nonsense ourselves?

“If you stay, though you are his mother, you’ll drive him to a frenzy, and then goodness knows what will happen!

“But I am a fool, too!... No matter! Come along! Do you trust me? Come, do you trust me or not?”

“You see, you... you... understand me, because you are an angel!”

“But don’t mind me! Don’t take any notice: I am talking nonsense, I am not worthy of you.... I am utterly unworthy of you!

“If only you knew how I love you both! Don’t laugh, and don’t be angry! You may be angry with anyone, but not with me!

“I am his friend, and therefore I am your friend, too, I want to be...

Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism and that’s just what they relish!

You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it.

Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped.

We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to!

“you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and perfection.”

I am not worthy to love you, but to do homage to you is the duty of every man who is not a perfect beast!

“though all my friends there are drunk, yet they are all honest, and though we do talk a lot of trash, and I do, too, yet we shall talk our way to the truth at last, for we are on the right path, while Pyotr Petrovitch... is not on the right path.

“And... the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the manners of a pothouse; and... and even admitting that he knew he had some of the essentials of a gentleman... what was there in that to be proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that...

So be it! Well, he’d make a point then of being dirty, greasy, pothouse in his manners and he wouldn’t care! He’d be worse!”

He says he is so busy that everything is a hindrance, and yet he lies in bed doing nothing.

They say, too, the girl was not at all pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly... and such an invalid... and queer.

“If I spoke so rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly drunk and... mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head completely...”

What generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister—simply by holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like that....

“He is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to impose on people, or rather to make fun of them.”

One moment you were angry, and the next your face looked like a sweetmeat.

Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist!

That’s why they instinctively dislike history, ‘nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,’ and they explain it all as stupidity!

That’s why they so dislike the living process of life; they don’t want a living soul!

“I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn’t tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.”

Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant by that.”