Quotes from Notes from Underground

Quotations follow the Constance Garnett translation (Dover Publications, 1918) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

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

2. 3

   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.

3. 4

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

4. 5

   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.

5. 6

   Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness... and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick.

6. 7

   Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.

7. 8

   One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked.

8. 9

   Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

9. 10

   He will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! ... that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!

10. 11

    What is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?

11. 12

    Which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

12. 13

    Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.

13. 14

    Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment.

14. 15

    I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.

15. 16

    I could not become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.

16. 17

    An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

17. 18

    Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition.

18. 19

    We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life ... we are all privately agreed that it is better in books.

19. 20

    We are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.

20. 21

    We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better.