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.

The patient goes on hoping till the last minute and says he is all right. He deludes himself

While for you neither tear, nor sigh, nor remembrance; no one in the whole world will ever come to you, your name will vanish from the face of the earth--as though you had never existed, never been born at all

keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully

brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her.

there is no need to strive for love when you can have everything without love.