Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground Quotes

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

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

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.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

To think too much is a disease.

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

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

It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

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

The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more.

…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…

…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. "I am alone and they are everyone, " I thought–and pondered.

...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.

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

I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.

And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

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

At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery.

I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.

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.

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

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

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.