Crime and Punishment quotes

He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase.

His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room.

The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open.

“Hm … yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of.

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

… But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.

It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most. … But I am talking too much.

It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing.

I’ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking … of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all.

Nobody wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered. … What matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as possible. …

Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such trifles that always ruin everything.

…”

“

Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must have somewhere to go.

Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere!

Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet … oh, if only she felt for me!

Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man ought to have at least one place where people feel for him!

But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust.

Do you suppose I don’t feel it? 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!

” And as though in despair he laid his head down on the table.

You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn!

Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?

No, that you don’t understand yet. … And for a whole year, I performed my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this” (he tapped the jug with his finger), “for I have feelings. But even so, I could not please her;

… She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. … Not on earth, but up yonder … they grieve over men, they weep, but they don’t blame them, they don’t blame them!

But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don’t blame!

Thirty kopecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she’s got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand?

“Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied!

Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me!

And then I will go of myself to be crucified, for it’s not merrymaking I seek but tears and tribulation! … Do you suppose, you that sell, that this pint of yours has been sweet to me?

“Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s nothing to pity me for!

I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied!

Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And then I will go of myself to be crucified, for it’s not merrymaking I seek but tears and tribulation!

Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they’ve dug there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it.

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

”

“

And have you made much money by your thinking?

” she managed to articulate at last.

Ugh! But what does it matter? That’s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go … that way … to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with.

A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.

… Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word … maybe we might feel more uneasy. … But what if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?

A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go … that way … to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory. …

Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about.

If we had any other word … maybe we might feel more uneasy. … But what if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?

His legs felt suddenly heavy and a great drowsiness came upon him. He turned homewards, but reaching Petrovsky Ostrov he stopped completely exhausted, turned off the road into the bushes, sank down upon the grass and instantly fell asleep.

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality.

At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them …

Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness he was not conscious of fatigue.

It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken.

Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!

In spite of his weakness he was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken.

Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!

Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined turning-point of …

… no reason to go) at the very hour, the very minute of his life when he was just in the very mood and in the very circumstances in which that meeting was able to exert the gravest and most decisive influence on his whole destiny?

As though it had been lying in wait for him on purpose!

It was about nine o’clock when he crossed the Hay Market.

He was only a few steps from his lodging.

He went in like a man condemned to death.

He thought of nothing and was incapable of thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably decided.

“

But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there’s no justice about it.

… Let us have another game.”

at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him! “

When reason fails, the devil helps!

” he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.

“

Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my punishment coming upon me? It is!

”

And where had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart.

A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul.

It was not the meanness of his sentimental effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor the meanness of the latter’s triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion in his heart.

“Is it you?” he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after a brief pause, he whistled. “

As hard up as all that! Why, brother, you’ve cut me out!

” he added, looking at Raskolnikov’s rags. “Come sit down, you are tired, I’ll be bound.”

Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home.

It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.

Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not remember.

When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him.

It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless.

He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now.

“Come, Rodya, my boy, don’t oppose it, afterwards will be too late; and I shan’t sleep all night, for I bought it by guess, without measure. Just right!” he cried triumphantly, fitting it on, “just your size!

A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress and a recommendation in its own way.

Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps.

Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,” he said to Pyotr Petrovitch, “and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands. Anyway, there’s no practicality.

Practicality goes well shod.

”

“Nonsense! There’s no practicality.” Razumihin flew at him. “

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.

Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, ‘Catch several hares and you won’t catch one.’

Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest.

You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society—the more whole coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too.

And how did he set to work? He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman’s trunks, her rags—and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the top drawer of the chest!

He did not know how to rob; he could only murder.

It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost his head. And he got off more by luck than good counsel!”

… even nodding to Zossimov, who had for some time been making signs to him to let the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his hat to the level of his shoulders to avoid crushing it as he stooped to go out of the door.

And even the curve of his spine was expressive of the horrible insult he had received.

“How could you—how could you!” Razumihin said, shaking his head in perplexity.

He bent down as close as possible to Zametov, and his lips began to move without uttering a word. This lasted for half a minute; he knew what he was doing, but could not restrain himself.

The terrible word trembled on his lips, like the latch on that door; in another moment it will break out, in another moment he will let it go, he will speak out.

“And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?” he said suddenly and—realised what he had done.

“Well, go to hell then,” he said gently and thoughtfully. “Stay,” he roared, as Raskolnikov was about to move. “Listen to me. Let me tell you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots!

If you’ve any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg.

And you are plagiarists even in that! There isn’t a sign of independent life in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you’ve lymph in your veins instead of blood. I don’t believe in any one of you!

Let me tell you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you’ve any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you are plagiarists even in that! There isn’t a sign of independent life in you!

You are made of spermaceti ointment and you’ve lymph in your veins instead of blood.

I don’t believe in any one of you! In any circumstances the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!” he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that Raskolnikov was again making a movement—“hear me out!

“

Ach! He is merciful, but not to us.

”

“

Ah, father! That’s words and only words! Forgive!

If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and …

He stared at Avdotya Romanovna without the least regard for good manners. They sometimes pulled their hands out of his huge bony paws, but far from noticing what was the matter, he drew them all the closer to him.

If they’d told him to jump head foremost from the staircase, he would have done it without thought or hesitation in their service.

Though Pulcheria Alexandrovna felt that the young man was really too eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety over her Rodya she looked on his presence as providential, and was unwilling to notice all his peculiarities.

“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!

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.

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?

Her hair had begun to grow grey and thin, there had long been little crow’s foot wrinkles round her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and sunken from anxiety and grief, and yet it was a handsome face.

She was Dounia over again, twenty years older, but without the projecting underlip.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna was emotional, but not sentimental, timid and yielding, but only to a certain point.

“She is lying,” he thought to himself, biting his nails vindictively. “Proud creature! She won’t admit she wants to do it out of charity! Too haughty!

Oh, base characters! They even love as though they hate.

… Oh, how I … hate them all!”

And even if you were right, if I really had determined on a vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak to me like that?

Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you have not either?

It is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin anyone, it is only myself. … I am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me like that? Why are you so pale? Rodya, darling, what’s the matter?”

“Never,” answered Raskolnikov. “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. They stood still in the gateway.

“I shall have to pull a long face with him too,” he thought, with a beating heart, and he turned white, “and do it naturally, too. But the most natural thing would be to do nothing at all.

Carefully do nothing at all! No, carefully would not be natural again.

… Oh, well, we shall see how it turns out. … We shall see … directly. Is it a good thing to go or not? The butterfly flies to the light. My heart is beating, that’s what’s bad!”

The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery—it wants life, it hasn’t completed its vital process, it’s too soon for the graveyard!

You can’t skip over nature by logic.

Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That’s the easiest solution of the problem! It’s seductively clear and you musn’t think about it. That’s the great thing, you mustn’t think!

But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less).

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. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive la guerre éternelle—till the New Jerusalem, of course!”

But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). 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.

Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive la guerre éternelle—till the New Jerusalem, of course!”

“Why the word ought? It’s not a matter of permission or prohibition. He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim.

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.

“

Oh, come, don’t we all think ourselves Napoleons now in Russia?

” Porfiry Petrovitch said with alarming familiarity.

“

Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught.

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not such a fool as you think. …”

“Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught.

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

Porfiry is not such a fool as you think. …”

And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth? And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm …” continued Raskolnikov, turning cold and shivering, “and the jewel case Nikolay found behind the door—was that possible? A clue?

You miss an infinitesimal line and you can build it into a pyramid of evidence!

A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible?” He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he had become. “I ought to have known it,” he thought with a bitter smile.

And altars are set up to him after his death, and so all is permitted.

No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but of bronze!

”

One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed—it’s a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to digest! How can they digest it! It’s too inartistic. “

A Napoleon creep under an old woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!

”

“The old woman is of no consequence,” he thought, hotly and incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not what matters! The old woman was only an illness. … I was in a hurry to overstep. …

I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side.

… I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that … Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people; ‘the happiness of all’ is their case.

… I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that … Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people; ‘the happiness of all’ is their case.

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.’

And what if I am a victim? In proposing to the object of my passion to elope with me to America or Switzerland, I may have cherished the deepest respect for her and may have thought that I was promoting our mutual happiness!

Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why, probably, I was doing more harm to myself than anyone!

”

“How could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the best society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of breeding, you know, poets, men of property.

And indeed as a rule in our Russian society the best manners are found among those who’ve been thrashed, have you noticed that?

I’ve deteriorated in the country. But I did get into prison for debt, through a low Greek who came from Nezhin. Then Marfa Petrovna turned up; she bargained with him and bought me off for thirty thousand silver pieces (I owed seventy thousand).

For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea—you look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home.

Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.

I should have gone perhaps on an expedition to the North Pole, because j’ai le vin mauvais and hate drinking, and there’s nothing left but wine. I have tried it.

“We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast?

Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is?

I sometimes fancy it like that.”

“

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. “Listen,” he added, turning to her a minute later.

“

What should I be without God?

” she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.

“That is all about the raising of Lazarus,” she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly.

The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book.

Five minutes or more passed.

“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don’t understand? You’ll understand later. …

Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap!

… That’s the goal, remember that! That’s my farewell message. Perhaps it’s the last time I shall speak to you. If I don’t come tomorrow, you’ll hear of it all, and then remember these words.

they say that officials of all ranks, even Privy Councillors, may be seen skipping gaily there; there you have it, modern science … yes, yes. … But as for my duties here, inquiries and all such formalities … you mentioned inquiries yourself just now …

I assure you these interrogations are sometimes more embarrassing for the interrogator than for the interrogated.

… You made the observation yourself just now very aptly and wittily.” (Raskolnikov had made no observation of the kind.) “One gets into a muddle! A regular muddle! One keeps harping on the same note, like a drum!

He-he! But that’s all nonsense, and on the surface. It’s not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is psychologically unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression! Through a law of nature he can’t escape me if he had anywhere to go.

Have you seen a butterfly round a candle? That’s how he will keep circling and circling round me.

Freedom will lose its attractions. He’ll begin to brood, he’ll weave a tangle round himself, he’ll worry himself to death! What’s more, he will provide me with a mathematical proof—if I only give him long enough interval.

Comes and asks why didn’t you take me long ago? he-he-he! And that can happen, you know, with the cleverest man, the psychologist, the literary man.

The temperament reflects everything like a mirror! Gaze into it and admire what you see!

But why are you so pale, Rodion Romanovitch? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?”

“What a business I’m having with you!” cried Porfiry with a perfectly good-humoured, sly and composed face. “And why do you want to know, why do you want to know so much, since they haven’t begun to worry you?

Why, you are like a child asking for matches!

And why are you so uneasy? Why do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!”

Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible.

The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night.

When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice.

In the same way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the flat.

“Am I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?”

Pyotr Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a gleam of desperate hope. “Can all that be really so irrevocably over? Is it no use to make another effort?”

… protested, for instance, when Andrey Semyonovitch belauded him for being ready to contribute to the establishment of the new “commune,” or to abstain from christening his future children, or to acquiesce if Dounia were to take a lover a month after marriage, and so on.

Pyotr Petrovitch so enjoyed hearing his own praises that he did not disdain even such virtues when they were attributed to him.

Pyotr Petrovitch had had occasion that morning to realise some five-percent bonds and now he sat down to the table and counted over bundles of notes.

Even the poorest and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to these paroxysms of pride and vanity which take the form of an irresistible nervous craving.

And Katerina Ivanovna was not broken-spirited; she might have been killed by circumstance, but her spirit could not have been broken, that is, she could not have been intimidated, her will could not be crushed.

Moreover Sonia had said with good reason that her mind was unhinged. She could not be said to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that her mind might well be overstrained.

“

There is no one⁠—no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!

” she cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into violent hysterical weeping.

“

I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.

”

Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia, … that’s so! … And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes.

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

So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!”

It was not so much the money I wanted, but something else. … I know it all now. … Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on.

I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man.

Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right …”

“But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman?

I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, forever.

… But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!” he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, “let me be!”

“

Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.

”

“Oh, I will, I will.”

They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore.

He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation!

“

Life would be too easy if it were so,

” answered Raskolnikov.

In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the windowsills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out of the windows … He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.

Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!

Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable.

Sonia said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He felt very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life there.

But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had never been able to feel alone.

Sometimes he walked out of the town on to the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near him.

It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares.

There he felt easier and even more solitary.

One day at dusk he sat for an hour listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again, as though his conscience smote him.

The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained!

So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.

Raskolnikov seated himself directly facing Porfiry, and looked at him without flinching. Porfiry screwed up his eyes and began lighting a cigarette.

He positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: ‘Tobacco’s bad for you,’ he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’ But how am I to give it up? What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the mischief, he-he-he, that I don’t.

Everything is relative, Rodion Romanovitch, everything is relative!

”

It was just one thing after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas?

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. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you remember, on your first visit we talked of it?

“

Ah, don’t disdain life!

” Porfiry went on. “You have a great deal of it still before you. How can you say you don’t want a mitigation of sentence? You are an impatient fellow!”

“Who am I?

I am a man with nothing to hope for, that’s all.

A man perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you. Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come to nothing.

Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another class of men? It’s not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It’s not time, but yourself that will decide that.

Be the sun and all will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun.

Why are you smiling again? At my being such a Schiller? I bet you’re imagining that I am trying to get round you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he!

When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You give yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch. And another thing, I’m convinced there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves as they walk.

This is a town of crazy people.

If only we had scientific men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul of man as in Petersburg.

This is a town of crazy people. If only we had scientific men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable investigations in Petersburg each in his own line.

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

The mere influences of climate mean so much. And it’s the administrative centre of all Russia and its character must be reflected on the whole country. But that is neither here nor there now. The point is that I have several times watched you.

I, of course, threw it all on my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It’s the well-known resource—flattery.

Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.

If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction.

With all Avdotya Romanovna’s natural aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect—she did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul.

And if once a girl’s heart is moved to pity, it’s more dangerous than anything.

She is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness—well, we all know how far such dreams can go.

“Are you so sure that she can’t?” Svidrigaïlov screwed up his eyes and smiled mockingly. “You are right, she doesn’t love me, but you can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress.

There’s always a little corner which remains a secret to the world and is only known to those two.

Will you answer for it that Avdotya Romanovna regarded me with aversion?”

“Why, of course.

Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself.

Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!”

“Ah, Avdotya Romanovna, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas, Avdotya Romanovna, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to the fantastic, the chaotic.

But it’s a misfortune to be broad without a special genius.

Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why, you used to reproach me with breadth!

… (

Everything seems stupid when it fails.

) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.

“Ah, it’s not picturesque, not aesthetically attractive! I fail to understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable.

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

I’ve never, never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime. I’ve never, never been stronger and more convinced than now.”

He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately—humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly?

Water wears out a stone.

And why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but still he went.