Notes from Underground Quotes

“وإني لأعتقد بأن أفضل تعريف يمكننا أن نُعرف به الإنسان هو أنه : كائنٌ عاق بساقين !”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then man will cease from INTENTIONAL error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this already. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all “direct” persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you:”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“Finally: I'm bored, and I constantly do nothing. And writing things down really seems like work. They say work makes a man good and honest. Well, here's a chance, at least.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

“For goodness sake,' they'll cry, 'you cannot argue against it--two times two is four! Nature doesn't consult you; it doesn't give a damn for your wishes or whether its laws please or do not please you. You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall. ...' And so on and so forth. Good God, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if, for one reason or another, I don't like these laws, including the 'two times two is four'? Of course, I cannot break through this wall with my head if I don't have the strength to break through it, but neither will I accept it simply because I face a stone wall and am not strong enough.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From The Underground

“In every man's memory there are things he won't reveal to others, except, perhaps, to his friends. And there are things he won't reveal even to friends, only, perhaps, to himself, and there, too, in secret. And finally, there are things he is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of them. In fact, the more decent the man, the more of them he has stored up.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“بالطبع ساعدتني القراءة كثيراً ، وحركت مُخيلتي، وأمدتني بالمسرات والآلام، لكنها كانت في لحظات أخرى، تزعجني حد الموت.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“Dreams, as we all know, are very curious things: certain incidents in them are presented with quite uncanny vividness, each detail executed with the finishing touch of a jeweller, while others you leap across as though entirely unaware of, for instance, space and time. Dreams seem to be induced not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what clever tricks my reason has sometimes played on me in dreams!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.
[. . .]
And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

“إن أقل ما يمكن أن يُقال هو أن الإنسان ، وفي كل مرة يبلغ فيها هدفاً من أهدافه، إلا ونلاحظ عليه شيئاً من : الضجر والقلق والضيق.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt an inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. I’m foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of suger, and maybe I’ll calm down. I’ll even wax tenderhearted, though afterwards I’ll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom.
And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“They did not strive to gain knowledge of life as we strive to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than the knowledge we derive from our science; for our science seeks to explain what life is and strives to understand it in order to teach others how to live, while they knew how to live without science...

Oh, these people were not concerned whether I understood them or not; they loved me without it. But I knew too that they would never be able to understand me, and for that reason I hardly ever spoke to them of it.

It remained somehow beyond the grasp of my reason, and yet it sank unconsciously deeper and deeper into my heart. I often told them that I had had a presentiment of it years ago and that all that joy and glory has been perceived by me while I was still back there as a nostalgic yearning, bordering at times on unendurably poignant sorrow; that I had had a presentiment of all of them and of their glory in the dreams of my heart and the reveries of my soul; and that I could often not look at the setting sun without tears.

I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“إنّ من بين الذّكريات الّتي يختزنها كلّ منّا، ذكريات لا نرويها إلّا لأصدقائنا، ومن بينها ذكريات أخرى لا نعترف بها حتى لأصدقائنا، ولا نردّدها إلّا على أنفسنا، بل ولا نردّدها على أنفسنا إلّا سرّا. وكلّ إنسان شريف أمين قد اختزن أثناء حياته قدرا كافيا من هذه الذّكريات، حتى ليمكنني أن أقول إنّ عدد هذه الذّكريات يكون على قدر ما يتّصف به الإنسان من الشّرف والأمانة.”
― فيودور دوستويفسكي, Notes from Underground

“Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for 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! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for 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! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?”
― Dostoyevsky, Notes From The Underground

“وهناك في الأخير أشياء، يخشى المرء أن يكشف عنها، حتى لنفسه هو بالذات.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“وثمة شيء آخر ظل يعذبني، وهو هذا بالضبط : إن ما من أحدٍ كان يشبهني، وما شبهت أنا أحداً.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness. For”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“Una conciencia demasiado clarividente es (se lo aseguro a ustedes) una enfermedad, una verdadera enfermedad.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Memorias del subsuelo

“What is to be done with millions of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“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. From”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering—that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“Moreover: then, you say, science itself will teach man (though this is really a luxury in my opinion) that in fact he has neither will nor caprice, and never did have any, and that he himself is nothing but a sort of piano key or a sprig in an organ;14 and that, furthermore, there also exist in the world the laws of nature; so that whatever he does is done not at all according to his own wanting, but of itself, according to the laws of nature. Consequently, these laws of nature need only be discovered, and then man will no longer be answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy. Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated according to these laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms, up to 108,000, and entered into a calendar; or, better still, some well-meaning publications will appear, like the present-day encyclopedic dictionaries, in which everything will be so precisely calculated and designated that there will no longer be any actions or adventures in the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“أقسم أيها السادة أن شدة الإدراك مرض ، مرض حقيقي خطير..إن حياة الإنسان المألوفة لا تتطلب منه أكثر من إدراك الإنسان العادي.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“So much have we lost touch with 'real life' that we occasionally feel a kind of disgust for it and so can't bear to be reminded of it. For we have arrived at the point where we look on 'real life' as toil, almost as compulsory service, and all of us privately agree that 'life' as we find it in book is better.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground