Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness.

I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.

Can a man of perception respect himself at all?

in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!" That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature of man.

Reminds me of Trump.

What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for

I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity,

whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!