Notable/Famous Quotes from The Idiot

“Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed.”

“I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.”

“There is much suffering in this face.”

“Now, I’m going to throw it into the fire, here—before all these witnesses. As soon as the fire catches hold of it, you put your hands into the fire and pick it out—without gloves, you know.”

“You wish to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfen, if that’s the case, I’m glad enough—that makes us brothers, you know.”

“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”

‘From his face he never lifted
That eternal mask of steel.’

“Not the railways, oh dear, no! Considered alone, the railways will not pollute the springs of life, but as a whole they are accursed.”

“Is it true, prince, that you once declared that ‘beauty would save the world’?”

“He was from head to foot permeated and saturated with the longing to be original.”

“An idiot!”