Notes from underground

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“And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.”

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“The more conscious I was of what was good, of everything "beautiful and sublime," the more deeply I sank into the morass and the more capable I was of becoming entirely bogged down in it.”

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“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. Then again, I don't know a thing about my illness; I'm not even sure what hurts.”

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“Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that!”

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“Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her flaws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is.”

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“In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.”

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“I write only for myself, and I wish to declare once and for all that if I write as though as I were addressing readers, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that form.”

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“But that's everything, you know, it's a priceless diamond, it's a maiden's treasure, love — why, a man would be ready to give his soul, to face death to gain that love.”

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“For what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?”

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“But I am fairly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.”

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“I have hundreds of such reminiscences; but at times someone stands out from the hundred and oppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down I should get rid of it. Why not try?”

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“If you say that even all this can be calculated on tables, the chaos, the gloom, and the curses, so that the possibility alone of a preliminary calculation would put a stop to everything and reason would hold sway—well, in that case man would deliberately go mad in order to escape his reason and assert himself. I believe this, I will vouch for it because this whole human business seems really only to consist of the fact that man has been continually proving to himself that he’s a man and not an organ-stop. He’ll prove it, whatever the way; he’ll prove it even by becoming a troglodyte … And after that, how can you fail to transgress, to applaud the fact that this is not yet the case and that as yet the devil only knows on what desire depends?”