It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.
It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle sta...
It appeared to him strange and marvelous that he should have stopped in the very same place as he used to do, as if he really imagined he could think the same thoughts now as then, and be interested i...
Is there a living man in the country? cried the Russian hero. I cry the same, though I am not a hero, and no one answers my cry.
In my view, Roman Catholicism is not even a faith, but is decidedly a continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and in it everything, beginning with faith, is subordinated to that idea. The Pope seize...
In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.
If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake That will be punishment as well as the prison.
I've never been a coward at heart, although I've always been a coward in action;
I've found out more in this one cursed night than I'd have learned in twenty years of living.
I've already warned you that the simplest ideas are the hardest to understand; I'll now add that they are also the hardest to explain.
I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I
I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? ...And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum o...
I understand only too well why Russians with means have all made tracks abroad… If the ship is about to sink, the rats are the first to desert it.
I seem to be ready for work, my materials are collected, yet the work doesn't get done! Nothing is done!
I owe them nothing now, and owe no one anything for ever. They are wicked and I will be wicked. They are cruel and I will be cruel.
I once saw a convict who had been twenty years in prison and was being released take leave of his fellow prisoners. There were men who remembered his first coming into prison, when he was young, carel...
I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.
I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a crimina...
I am an inveterate buffoon, and been from birth up, your reverence, it's as though it were a craze in me. I dare say it's a devil within me. But only a little one. A more serious one would have chosen...
I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.