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.

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. 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.

it still turns out that I was always the most to blame in everything.