“In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it. ”

“[In the world below...] The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path; but the soul which desires the body, and which... has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds or have been concerned in foul murders or other crimes... from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled...”

“Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?”

“There are few men who durst publish to the world the prayers they make to God. ”

“In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.”

““What scholars came, what did they find! Like candles they shed light on the world. Which one broke through this darkness? They told a tale and fell asleep.””

“These are just a few samples; for more quotes from this work, see Crime and Punishment”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. ”

“Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error. ”

“Envy does not allow humanity to sleep.”

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

“The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.”

““If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.””

“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.”

“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”

“Train up a fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.”

“Negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, you are supposed to do something.”

““He had cast out of heaven his dim star; it had fallen, and its track was lost in the darkness of night. It would never return to the sky again, because life was given only once and never came a second time. If he could have turned back the days and years of the past, he would have replaced the falsity with truth, the idleness with work, the boredom with happiness; he would have given back purity to those whom he had robbed of it. He would have found God and goodness, but that was as impossible as to put back the fallen star into the sky, and because it was impossible he was in despair.””

“″“Today, we’ll hear the teachings from his mouth.” said Govinda. Siddhartha did not answer. He felt little curiosity for the teachings, he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had, just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha’s teachings again and again, though these reports only represented second- or third-hand information. But attentively he looked at Gotama’s head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of truth. This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. This man was holy. Never before, Siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one.””

“In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it.”

“And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.”

““Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” ”

“The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.”

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Beware the ides of March.”

“The streets of London have their map, but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”

“God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.”

“The sergeant's widow told you a lie when she said I flogged her. I never flogged her. She flogged herself.”

“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.”