It's curious and ridiculous how much the gaze of a prudish and painfully chaste man touched by love can sometimes express and that precisely at a moment when the man would of course sooner be glad to...
It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.
It is curious that this man who, even in my childhood, made such an impression upon me, who had such a crucial influence on the whole bent of my mind, and who perhaps has even cast his shadow over the...
It is almost better to tell your own lies than somebody else's truth; in the first case you are a man, in the second you are no better than a parrot!
It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever cured a criminal. These forms of chastisement only punish him and reassure society against the offenc...
It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through at random. I l...
In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that i...
If he's alive he has everything in his power! Whose fault is it he doesn't understand that
If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a dis...
I would gnaw, gnaw at myself with my teeth, inwardly, secretly, tear and suck at myself until the bitterness finally turned into some shameful, accursed sweetness.
I was laughed at by everyone upon every occasion. But no one knew or guessed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than anyone how ridiculous I was, that man was myself, and that was t...
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 crea...
I want to be there when every one suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built by this longing, and I am a believer.
I walked along Nevsky Avenue.Actually it was more torture, humiliation, and bilious irritation than a stroll...
I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and longed to go and seek there the key of all mysteries, thinking that I might find there a new life, perhaps some great city where life should be gr...
I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art jus...
I think that if the devil does not exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
I swear to you, sirs, that excessive consciousness is a disease--a genuine, absolute disease.
I suffered all evening, all night, I'm partly suffering now as well.
I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, i...