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.

Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it.

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.