The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!

Where it really comes from

Apollon Maykov, an untitled quatrain of 1878 from the cycle 'Из Аполлодора Гностика' (From Apollodorus the Gnostic): «Не говори, что нет спасенья, / Что ты в печалях изнемог: / Чем ночь темней, тем ярче звёзды, / Чем глубже скорбь, тем ближе Бог.» ('Do not say there is no salvation, that you are worn out with sorrows: the darker the night, the brighter the stars; the deeper the grief, the closer God.') Crime and Punishment appeared in 1866, twelve years before the poem. Searches of its Russian text and of every other source text for «ночь темней» and «ярче звезды», and of the English for 'brighter the stars', find nothing. The two were close friends and wrote to each other for decades, which may have helped the mix-up.