Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

and I should come out into the light of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel.

An intense an irrational narcissist fantasy.

Anything but the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the lowest in reality. Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between.

I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists.

Even in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one lives.

However bad it may be at home, anyway they are your father and mother, and not enemies, strangers.

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.”

man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

Some women get up quarrels with their husbands just because they love them.

You know that you may torment a man on purpose through love. Women are particularly given to that, thinking to themselves ‘I will love him so, I will make so much of him afterward, that it’s no sin to torment him a little now.’

Even toil will be a joy, you may deny yourself bread for your children and even that will be a joy. They will love you for it afterward; so you are laying by for your future.

Is not all that happiness when they are the three together, husband, wife and child? One can forgive a great deal for the sake of such moments.

there is no need to strive for love when you can have everything without love.

‘Into my house come bold and free, Its rightful mistress there to be.’”

“Into my house come bold and free, Its rightful mistress there to be.”

He could have been happy..

“They won’t let me . . . I can’t be good!”