Claire’s Reviews > Notes from Underground > Status Update

I could even have forgiven a beating, but I simply could not forgive his moving me and in the end just not noticing me.

in my soul I have never been a coward, though I constantly turned coward in reality, but-don't laugh too quickly, there's an explanation for that; rest assured, I have an explanation for everything.

My debauchery I undertook solitarily, by night, covertly, fearfully, filthily, with a shame that would not abandon me at the most loathsome moments, and at such moments even went so far as a curse. I was then already bearing the underground in my soul. I was terribly afraid of somehow being seen, met, recognized. I used to frequent various rather murky places.

It's perfectly clear to me now that it was I who, owing to my boundless vanity, and hence also my exactingness towards myself, very often looked upon myself with furious dissatisfaction, reaching the point of loathing, and therefore mentally attributed my view to everyone else.

You know what, though: I'm convinced that our sort, the underground ones, ought to be kept on a tether. Though we're capable of sitting silently in the underground for forty years, once we do come out and let loose, we talk, talk, talk ...

whether it’s good or bad, it’s sometimes also very pleasant to break something

But even if he isn't stupid, all the same he's monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

question:who is he? answer: a lazybones

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a bab-bler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are.

but that is simply because i don’t respect myself. how can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself.