Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

But anyhow: what can a decent man speak about with the most pleasure? Answer: about himself. So then I, too, will speak about myself.

I swear to you, gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, full-blown sickness.

But all the same I am firmly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

Nature doesn’t ask your permission; it doesn’t care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You’re obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well.

I said: a man takes revenge because he finds justice in it. That means he has found a primary cause, a basis—namely, justice. So he is set at ease on all sides and, consequently, takes his revenge calmly and successfully, being convinced that he is doing an honest and just thing.

But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms. The day after tomorrow, at the very latest, you’ll begin to despise yourself for having knowingly hoodwinked yourself.

and when was it, to begin with, in all these thousands of years, that man acted solely for his own profit?

But man is so partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic.

though man has learned to see more clearly on occasion than in barbarous times, he is still far from having grown accustomed to acting as reason and science dictate.

Man needs only independent wanting, whatever this independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

Man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well?

But man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself. And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not at all in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four—that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.

Reading was, of course, a great help—it stirred, delighted, and tormented me.

And with love one can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow, it’s good to live in the world, no matter how.

A father always loves his daughters more than the mother.

We’ve even grown so unaccustomed that at times we feel a sort of loathing for real “living life,” and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it. For we’ve reached a point where we regard real “living life” almost as labor, almost as service, and we all agree in ourselves that it’s better from a book.