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Book: Notes from the Underground
Quotes of Book: Notes from the Underground
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  1. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    Such a gentleman simply dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down, and nothing but a wall will stop him. {By the way: facing the wall, such gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and men of action--are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something tranquillising, morally soothing, final--maybe even something mysterious ... but of the wall later.}
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  2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely nothing more.
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  3. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf.
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  4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is "sublime and beautiful."
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  5. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.
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  6. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness,
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  7. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    And once they have children, the most difficult times will seem to them happy, so long as there is love and courage. 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. As the children grow up you feel that you are an example, a support for them; that even after you die your children will always keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have received them from you, they will take on your semblance and likeness. So you see this is a great duty. How can it fail to draw the father and mother nearer? People say it's a trial to have children. Who says that? It is heavenly happiness! Are you fond of little children, Liza? I am awfully fond of them. You know-a little rosy baby boy at your bosom, and what husband's heart is not touched, seeing his wife nursing his child! A plump little rosy baby, sprawling and snuggling, chubby little hands and feet, clean tiny little nails, so tiny that it makes one laugh to look at them; eyes that look as if they understand everything. And while it sucks it clutches at your bosom with its little hand, plays. When its father comes up, the child tears itself away from the bosom, flings itself back, looks at its father, laughs, as though it were fearfully funny, and falls to sucking again. Or it will bite its mother's breast when its little teeth are coming, while it looks sideways at her with its little eyes as though to say, 'Look, I am biting!' 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. Yes, Liza, one must first learn to live oneself before one blames others!
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  8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    In that case, of course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan.
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  9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon-the Great and also the present one. Take North America-the eternal union. Take the farce of Schleswig-Holstein. . . . And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations-and absolutely nothing more.
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  10. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity.
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  11. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.
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  12. Fyodor Dostoyevsky _ Notes from the Underground

    Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature.
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