Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“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.” – Chapter 2, pg. 30

“Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be! How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature! And vile is he who calls him vile for that.” – Chapter 13, pg. 148

“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.”
– Chapter 19, pg. 240

“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 bathhouse in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.”
– Chapter 21, pg. 261

“Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing is 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 flattery, it is just as agreeable and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be coarse satisfaction, but it is still a satisfaction.” – Chapter 34, pg. 421

“What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.”
– Chapter 43, pg. 478

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. I was doubtful that I would be able to relate to the characters and situations since it was written such a long time ago. But I guess human nature is recognizably the same as it was in the past (and prostitutes never go out of style). Only Dostoevsky's vocabulary has aged. Although I must admit the first few

chapters had me impatiently wondering whether the entire book would be about Raskolnikov stressing over the double murder he commits (I'm still not sure if he did it for the money or for ideological reasons), but eventually a bunch of other interesting characters and subplots started popping up until I couldn't put the thing down! I enjoyed the mind games the detective played on Raskolnikov, and I cheered when his best friend and his sister finally got together. In short, I definitely think everyone should read this book at some point in their lives. It is by far a new favorite of mine.