Notes From the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The properties of our romantic are to understand everything, to see everything, and to see often incomparably more clearly than our very most positive minds do; not to be reconciled with anyone or anything, but at the same time not to spurn anything; to get around everything, to yield to everything, to be politic with everyone; never to lose sight of the useful, practical goal (some nice little government apartment, a little pension, a little decoration or two) – to keep an eye on this goal through all enthusiasms and little volumes of lyrical verses, and at the same time also to preserve “the beautiful and lofty” inviolate in himself till his dying day, and incidentally to preserve himself quite successfully as well, somehow in cotton wool, like some little piece of jewelry, if only, shall we say, for the benefit of that same “beautiful and lofty.”