If a man is ever so little developed and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts that can’t be avoided, but will seek other explanations of them, will introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will give them another significance and put them in another light.
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1867). copy citation

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Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Source Crime and Punishment
Topic explanation light
Date 1867
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2554/2554-h/2554-h.htm

Context

““If I had done that thing, I should certainly have said that I had seen the workmen and the flat,” Raskolnikov answered, with reluctance and obvious disgust. “But why speak against yourself?” “Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny everything flatly at examinations. If a man is ever so little developed and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts that can’t be avoided, but will seek other explanations of them, will introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will give them another significance and put them in another light. Porfiry might well reckon that I should be sure to answer so, and say I had seen them to give an air of truth, and then make some explanation.” “But he would have told you at once that the workmen could not have been there two days before, and that therefore you must have been there on the day of the murder at eight o’clock.” source