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Quotes from Notes from Underground — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

1821–1881 Russia

← All quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

10 quotes

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.

Notes from Underground (1864)

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.

Notes from Underground (1864)

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

Notes from Underground (1864)

The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions.

Notes from Underground (1864)

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

Notes from Underground (1864)

When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

Notes from Underground (1864)

I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man.

Notes from Underground (1864)

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?

Notes from Underground (1864)

... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.

Notes from Underground (1864)

Once it's been proved to you that you're descended from an ape, it's no use pulling a face; just accept it. Once they've proved to you that a single droplet of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow human beings and consequently that all so-called virtues and duties are nothing but ravings and prejudices, then accept that too, because there's nothing to be done.

Notes from Underground (1864)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.