Raskolnikov Ubermensch Quotes

Crime? What crime? ... My killing a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender woman ... and you call that a crime? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov. ~ Dave Barry

When reason fails, the devil helps! ~ Markus Zusak

Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has even been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh
one might well ponder what kind of problem it is; Napoleon this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly… . No, it's nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome! - and for a whole month I've been… ." But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere! ~ Philip Roth

Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system. Raskolnikov ~ Anton Chekhov

Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says 'All for me' is a horror to us. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly
and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all
that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for
years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and distracted step mother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for
certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it! ... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St.
John. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The thing about Dostoevsky's characters is that they are alive. By which I don't just mean that they're successfully realized or developed or "rounded". The best of them live inside us, forever, once we've met them. Recall the proud and pathetic Raskolnikov, the naive Devushkin, the beautiful and damned Nastasya of The Idiot, the fawning Lebyedev and spiderish Ippolit of the same novel; C&P's ingenious maverick detective Porfiry Petrovich (without whom there would probably be no commercial crime fiction w/ eccentrically brilliant cops); Marmeladov, the hideous and pitiful sot; or the vain and noble roulette addict Aleksey Ivanovich of The Gambler; the gold-hearted prostitutes Sonya and Liza; the cynically innocent Aglaia; or the unbelievably repellent Smerdyakov, that living engine of slimy resentment in whom I personally see parts of myself I can barely stand to look at; or the idealized and all too-human Myshkin and Alyosha, the doomed human Christ and triumphant child-pilgrim, respectively. These and so many other FMD creatures are alive-retain what Frank calls their "immense vitality"-not because they're just skillfully drawn types or facets of human beings but because, acting withing plausible and morally compelling plots, they dramatize the profoundest parts of all humans, the parts most conflicted, most serious-the ones with the most at stake. Plus, without ever ceasing to be 3-D individuals, Dostoevsky's characters manage to embody whole ideologies and philosophie ~ David Foster Wallace

The meaning is, that you all bore me to tears and I'd like to be left alone,' Raskolnikov answered calmly. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime. ~ Boris Pasternak

Dostoyevsky knew a lot but not everything. He, for instance, thought that if you kill a human you'll turn into Raskolnikov. But we know now that one can kill five - ten, one hundred people - and go to the theatre in the evening. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Raskolnikov once said: When reason fails, the devil helps! ~ Markus Zusak

He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old student's overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of the sofa. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Socialists have found good the equality, and bad the inequality. Good the servants and bad the tyrants. I crossed the threshold of good and evil in order to live my life intensely. I live today and can not await tomorrow. The wait is of peoples and of humanity, so could not be my affair. ~ Renzo Novatore

Raskolnikov sat in silence, listening with disgust. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject - "I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings - they must be damp - when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind - you know what I mean? and the street lamps shine through it …. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pyotr Petrovitch stole a glance at Raskolnikov. Their eyes met, and the fire in Raskolnikov's seemed ready to reduce him to ashes ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Dingy Playing Cards" by Robert Bly
Friends, it's time to give up our hope for Rapture. Saucers will not carry us away. Raskolnikov
Had to depend on the police to help him sleep.

Our soul loves the dingy cards that have been dealt
To the ne'er-do-wells. The old men put the old
Queens down with their smoke-stained fingers.

In the Cirque Du Soleil, when the acrobats
Sweep out over the crowd, babies are being
Born who know much more than we ever did.

The yellow teeth of old jackrabbits explains a lot
About the shortage of mercy; the caterpillar's walk
Reminds us of the Mongols galloping toward Khorakhan.

After the funeral, once they are safe, the dead begin
To miss losing at cards. We know that Cain and Abel
Want to meet each other again on the plowed field.

Robert, there's not a single humiliation we could
Have done without. We are still perched on a pole.
What will happen to us depends a lot on the wind. ~ Robert Bly

Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh - and now? You have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalizers of things which lend themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand - with our hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds; - but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved - evil thoughts! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Raskolnikov had been listening intently, but with a sense of unhealthy discomfort. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you can show a person logical proof that essentianlly he's got nothing to cry about, he'll stop crying. That seems clear. Don't you think he'd stop crying?'
"That would make life too easy," Raskolnikov replied. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Remember, our kind protects you Normals from the Pures. We are the rope tied between man and super-beast. A rope forever dangling from the precipice.
I tap Zetania's shoulder and ask, "What's a precipice?"
"A cliff's edge," she whispers.
Precipice. Must be a French word. ~ Daven Anderson

She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Life [had] replaced logic. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky