Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

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.

from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; 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.

enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

neither to forgive, for my assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same.

The wall has for them something tranquilizing, morally soothing, final—maybe even something mysterious

l’homme de la nature et de la vérité.

I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all?

invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.

But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more.

that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.

For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be senseless in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves.

but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature,

while will is a

manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reas...

But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get rid of.

owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.

“I am alone and they are everyone,”

to refuse to accept anyone or anything, but at the same time not to despise anything;

depression will drive a man to such a pitch of hysteria?

And cunning so easily goes hand-in-hand with feeling.

Resentment—why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and painful consciousness!

what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books.

Why, we don’t even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called?