Notes From the Underground

They laughed cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves.

As the children grow up you feel that you are an example, a support for them; that even after you die your children will always keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have received them from you, they will take on your semblance and likeness.

Why, do you suppose he really loves you, that lover of yours? I don’t believe it. How can he love you when he knows you may be called away from him any minute? He would be a low fellow if he did! Will he have a grain of respect for you? What have you in common with him? He laughs at you and robs you—that is all his love amounts to! You are lucky if he does not beat you. Very likely he does beat you, too. Ask him, if you have got one, whether he will marry you. He will laugh in your face, if he doesn’t spit in it or give you a blow—though maybe he is not worth a bad halfpenny himself. And for what have you ruined your life, if you come to think of it?

bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased

did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.

that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness.

something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left again--that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause.

That is just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case of the laws of nature again.

because it was very dull to sit with one's hands folded, and so one began cutting capers.

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