Quotes from The Idiot

Quotations follow the Constance Garnett translation (Modern Library, 1913) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   The prince says that beauty saves the world!

2. 3

   Compassion was the chief and perhaps the only law of human existence.

3. 4

   It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

4. 5

   It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise!

5. 6

   Yes, I am an idiot, an absolute idiot!

6. 7

   Do you see this packet? It contains a hundred thousand roubles. Now, I'm going to throw it into the fire, here—before all these witnesses.

7. 8

   The most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain knowledge that in an hour,—then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now—this very instant—your soul must quit your body.

8. 9

   What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to life again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!

9. 10

   A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal.

10. 11

    He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time.

11. 12

    Why, a man's faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!

12. 13

    The essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reason, or atheism, or crime, or acts of any kind—it has nothing to do with these things—and never had.

13. 14

    The bray of a donkey aroused me, a donkey in the town market. I saw the donkey and was extremely pleased with it, and from that moment my head seemed to clear.

14. 15

    I told you before that I did not love her with love, but with pity.

15. 16

    Oh, no; I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She's a child now—a real child.