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Named source · 1866

Crime and Punishment Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Context & Meanings

3 quotations linked to Crime and Punishment by or associated with Fyodor Dostoevsky, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

About this source

1866 psychological and philosophical novel

Topics and ideas

Crime, guilt, conscience, fear, poverty, moral rationalization, independence, error, suffering, compassion and the conflict between abstract theories and lived consequences.

English wording

Translation

Constance Garnett — Translator · Russian → English

The wording shown here follows the represented English edition or translation.

Why the edition matters

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Represented passages

3 quotations with source context and meaning

Source identified1
Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.”

Voice: Fictional character · Raskolnikov

The thought notices how novelty can feel more threatening than familiar difficulty, but in the novel it belongs to Raskolnikov while he is approaching a contemplated crime, so it is not presented as generic motivational advice.

Source details

Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter I, printed page 2 / Wikisource scan leaf 34, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. Raskolnikov thinks “Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most” while walking toward the pawnbroker during his contemplated “rehearsal”; the line remains morally compromised fictional interior monologue rather than generic motivational advice.

Source identified2
To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”

Voice: Fictional character · Razumihin

Razumihin values the capacity to make and correct one’s own mistakes over passive dependence on borrowed conclusions, making independent error part of an active search for truth.

Source details

Crime and Punishment, Part III, Chapter I, printed page 203 / Wikisource scan leaf 235, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. Razumihin argues that going wrong in one’s own way is better than going right in someone else’s while defending the role of making one’s own errors in reaching truth; it remains energetic fictional character dialogue rather than direct Dostoevsky autobiography.

Source identified3
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

“There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.”

Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator

The narrator observes that attention and interest can arise before conversation, capturing the immediate impressions people sometimes form in an encounter without claiming those impressions are necessarily accurate.

Source details

Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter II, printed page 10 / Wikisource scan leaf 42, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. The narrator observes that some chance meetings interest us before a word is spoken while introducing Raskolnikov’s first attention to Marmeladov in the tavern; this remains literary narration rather than an empirical psychological law.