Crime and Punishment
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Read between May 30 - June 15, 2016
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“Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added resolutely. “And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome! and for a whole month I’ve been....” But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation.
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Do you still say your prayers, Rodya, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you.
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you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye, till we meet then, I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many kisses.
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Why is she consenting then? What’s the point of it? What’s the answer? It’s clear enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone else she is doing it! For one she loves, for one she adores, she will sell
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I won’t have your sacrifice, Dounia, I won’t have it, mother! It shall not be, so long as I am alive, it shall not, it shall not! I won’t accept it!”
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He was very poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in development, knowledge and convictions, as
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though their beliefs and interests were beneath him.
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a big tavern, which had always aroused in him a feeling of aversion, even of fear,
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“No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it! Granted, granted that there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway, I couldn’t bring myself to it! I couldn’t do
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it, I couldn’t do it! Why, why then am I still...?”
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“Lord,” he prayed, “show me my path, I renounce that accursed... dream of mine.”
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“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service
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What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?
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And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint....
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In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans.
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It was his conviction that this eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease, developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other disease.
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his reason and will would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the simple reason that his design was “not a crime....”
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Life is real! haven’t I lived just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of Heaven to her and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the reign of reason and light... and of will, and
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Pride and self-confidence grew continually stronger in him; he was becoming a different man every moment. What was it had happened to work this revolution in him? He did not know himself; like a man catching at a straw, he suddenly felt that he, too, ‘could live, that there was still life for him, that his life had not died with the old woman.’
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To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
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Again, it became suddenly plain and perceptible to him that he had just told a fearful lie, that he would never now be able to speak freely of everything, that
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a suggestion that there are certain persons who can... that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.”
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But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?”
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That, I take it, is the point of your article. But that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind... more terrible than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed....”
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“If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment, as well as the prison.”
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“I ought to have known it,” he thought with a bitter smile. “And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did know!” he whispered in despair. At times, he came to a standstill at some thought.
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because for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble object—ha-ha! Thirdly,
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Something strange, as it were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides.... Razumihin turned pale.
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“No, no! God will protect her, God!” she repeated beside herself. “But, perhaps, there is no God at all,” Raskolnikov answered with a sort of malignance, laughed and looked at her.
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It would be better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!”
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“Yes, that’s what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her.... Do you understand now?”
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“I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.”
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Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted to have the daring... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”
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I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman’s I only went to try.... You may be sure of that!”
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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!”
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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.