Notes from Underground

Famous quotes

• I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.

  Part I: Underground, Chapter IIn context

  • Character
  • Health

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

  Part I: Underground, Chapter IIIn context

  • Thinking

• Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

  Part 1, Chapter 5 (tr. Constance Garnett, 1918)In context

  • Intelligence
  • Talking

• I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

  Part I: Underground, Chapter VIIIIn context

  • Philosophy

• I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

  Part I: Underground, Chapter IXIn context

  • Philosophy

• Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.

  Part I: Underground, Chapter IXIn context

  • Philosophy

• Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself

  Part I: Underground, Chapter XIIn context

  • Friendship
  • Truth & Lies

• Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.

  Part II: À Propos of the Wet Snow, Chapter IXIn context

  • Character

• I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better⁠—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?

  Part II: À Propos of the Wet Snow, Chapter XIn context

  • Happiness

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