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Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia and is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

Read more about Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
missed my proper career. I ought to have been in the army, upon my
word I ought. I shouldnt have been a Napoleon, but I might have been a
major, he-he! Well, Ill tell you the whole truth, my dear fellow, about
this _special case_, I mean: actual fact and a mans temperament, my
dear sir, are weighty matters and its astonishing how they sometimes
deceive the sharpest calculation! I--listen to an old man--am speaking
seriously, Rodion Romanovitch” (as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch, who
was scarcely five-and-thirty, actually seemed to have grown old; even
his voice changed and he seemed to shrink together) “Moreover, Im
a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What do you say? I fancy I
really am: I tell you these things for nothing and dont even expect a
reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid
thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of
life, and what tricks it can play! So that it sometimes is hard for a
poor examining lawyer to know where he is, especially when hes liable
to be carried away by his own fancy, too, for you know he is a man after
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More on this topic:

"Imitate then innovate", an article by David Perell