Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am a sick man. . . . I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.

Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself.

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.

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.

that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.

“I don’t know, Liza. I knew a father who was a stern, austere man,

“What next?” she said, with a faint smile. “I should be jealous, I really should. To think that she should kiss anyone else! That she should love a stranger more than her father! It’s painful to imagine it. Of course, that’s all nonsense, of course every father would be reasonable at last. But I believe before I should let her marry, I should worry myself to death; I should find fault with all her suitors. But I should end by letting her marry whom she herself loved. The one whom the daughter loves always seems the worst to the father, you know. That is always so. So many family troubles come from that.”

“Why, you . . . speak somehow like a book,”