Quotes from Crime and Punishment

“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“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!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But 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. ”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“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?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“What do you think?" shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, "you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?" cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies' hands.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“In a morbid condition, dreams are often distinguished by their remarkably graphic, vivid, and extremely lifelike quality. The resulting picture is sometimes monstrous, but the setting and the whole process of the presentation sometimes happen to be so probable, and with details so subtle, unexpected, yet artistically consistent with the whole fullness of the picture, that even the dreamer himself would be unable to invent them in reality, though he were as much an artist as Pushkin or Turgenev. Such dreams, morbid dreams, are always long remembered and produce a strong impression on the disturbed and already excited organism of the person.Raskolnikov had a terrible dream.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“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.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

“What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Crime and Punishment

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“Sam, há dois anos, não fazia qualquer ideia de como era o mundo há minha volta. Não sabia o que tu eras. Não sabia que existiam fadas a sério. Não poderia ter imaginado nada disso. - Abanei a cabeça. - Que mundo este, Sam. É maravilhoso e assustador. Cada dia é diferente. Nunca pensei que teria uma vida e agora tenho.”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from All Together Dead

“She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Passage

“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from A Moveable Feast

“you have to play it out sometimes.”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from From Dead to Worse

“White ain't nothing.'
Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.'
'Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.'
'Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.'
I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding.
Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--'
'Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?'
Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachel. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.'
She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free, and many slaves ran away.”
...
She was silent for a moment, then went on. 'Well, after a while, slavery became so profitable to people who had slaves and even to those who didn't that most people started to believe that black people weren't really people like everybody else. And when the Civil War was fought, and Mama Rachel and Papa Luke and all the other slaves were freed, people continued to think that way. Even the Northeners who fought the war didn't really see us equal to white people.
'So, now, even though seventy years have passed since slavery, most white people still think of us as they did then, that we're not as good as they are. And people like Mr. Simms hold onto that belief harder than some other folks because they have little else to hold onto. For him to believe that he is better than we are makes him think that he's important, simply because he's white.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, quote from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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