Crime And Punishment Quotes

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?

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

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!

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

What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.

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

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions – it’s like a dream.

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

Dark windows are often a very clear proof.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

The biggest book for me, when I was fifteen, was Crime and Punishment, which I read in a kind of fever. When I put it down, I thought, if this is what novels are then I want to be a novelist.

Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

You want to make a guy comfortable enough to confess to murder.

As one reads history … one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.