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FDFyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Life dates: 1821 AD — 1881 AD

Dostoyevsky’s arguments change with speaker and circumstance. Read Razumihin’s excited defence of independent mistakes beside the narrator’s account of possible renewal, keeping Garnett’s English wording and the scene in view.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗lovetruthfaithlifetimeknowledgedeathjustice

Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Fyodor Dostoyevsky and gives his lifetime as 1821–1881. It credits Constance Garnett with the English translation; the linked text repeats that credit before a biographical introduction and the novel. The introduction must remain distinct from the characters and narrator. Digital credits name John Bickers, Dagny and David Widger. The checked record does not identify the underlying printed edition or publisher. This profile binds the existing Dostoyevsky-labelled identity and selected passages only; it does not merge other spelling labels or fill their unknown quotation dates.

In Part III, Chapter I, Razumihin excitedly defends making one’s own mistakes while escorting Raskolnikov’s mother and sister. His forceful speech and their responses belong to a particular social exchange, not a licence to act carelessly. Epilogue II then describes Raskolnikov feeling a possible change before he can analyse it, with Sonia and a New Testament in the surrounding scene. Both complete selected English extracts match the checked Garnett text under limited normalization. The ending suggests renewal within the novel; it does not guarantee recovery or erase responsibility for harm.

Reading this voice

Read Part III, Chapter I with its listeners and their responses, then the final section of the epilogue with its religious setting. Distinguish Razumihin’s speech from the narrator’s account of Raskolnikov. Both selected complete English extracts match this Garnett text under punctuation, case and spacing comparison. Other attribution spellings and unknown archive dates remain separate and unchanged.

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Quotations and sayings

10c. 1851 AD
Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to reason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and we will not impose on them an impossible restriction. The sight of an unworthy father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature, especially when he compares him with the excellent fathers of his companions. The conventional answer to this question is: 'He begot you, and you are his flesh and blood, and therefore you are bound to love him.' The youth involuntarily reflects: 'But did he love me when he begot me?' he asks, wondering more and more. 'Was it for my sake he begot me? He did not know me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine, and he has only transmitted to me a propensity to drunkenness- that's all he's done for me.... Why am I bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all my life after?Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do not expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. 'Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window'.
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11c. 1851 AD
Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.- Yes; it's a funny habit.- No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man. If dogs could reason and criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters -far more, I think. I am more convinced that there is far more foolishness among us.
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14c. 1851 AD
I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.
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