Notes from Underground Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him.

Notes from Underground

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

Notes from Underground

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Notes from Underground

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

Notes from Underground

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it ...

Notes from Underground

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful...

Notes from Underground

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.

Notes from Underground

What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

Notes from Underground

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 babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be ...

Notes from Underground

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Notes from Underground

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

Notes from Underground

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

Notes from Underground

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

Notes from Underground

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

Notes from Underground

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

Notes from Underground

But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo a...

Notes from Underground

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

Notes from Underground

Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions.

Notes from Underground