Crime and Punishment 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,” he added dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter V

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

— Razumihin · Chapter I

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter VI

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,” he said wildly and walked away to the window.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter VII

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

— Spoken by a character · Chapter II

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

— Spoken by a character · Chapter VI

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

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof, as the English proverb says, but that’s only from the rational point of view--you can’t help being partial, for after all a lawyer is only human.

— Porfiry Petrovitch · Chapter II

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

— Spoken by a character · Chapter I

But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

I divined then, Sonia,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

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

— Raskolnikov · Chapter V