Underground Man Quotes

we have grown so out of the habit of even living that we sometimes feel sort of loathing for "living life", and therefore we cannot bear to be reminded of it. You see, we have reached the point where we look upon real "living life" almost as a burden, almost as servitude, and we are all agreed amongst ourselves that it is much better to live life according to books. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Schizophrenia is a cruel disease. The lives of those affected are often chronicles of constricted experiences, muted emotions, missed opportunities, unfulfilled expectations. It leads to a twilight existence, a twentieth century underground man. The fate of these patients has been worsened by our propensity to misunderstand, our failure to provide adequate treatment and rehabilitation, our meager research efforts. A disease which should be found, in the phrase of T.S. Eliot, in the "frigid purgatorial fires" has become through our ignorance and neglect a living hell. ~ E. Fuller Torrey

Dostoevsky's underground man ... observes his contemporaries striving to establish false goals where there are no naturally generated ones ... He argues they should be conscious and honest enough to recognize that the goal itself is not an absolute, and probably not even important. A strong attachment to the telos indicates that the spontaneous enjoyment the child once took in road-building has waned. ~ John Carroll

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (November 11 [O.S. October 30] 1821 – February 9 [O.S. January 28] 1881) is considered one of two greatest prose writers of Russian literature, alongside close contemporary Leo Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century thought and world literature. Dostoevsky's chief ouevre, mainly novels, explore the human psychology in the disturbing political, social and spiritual context of his 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the anonymous, embittered voice of the Underground Man, is considered by Walter Kaufmann as the "best overture for existentialism ever written." Source: Wikipedia ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

An army, great in space, may offer opposition in a brief span of time. One man, brief in space, must spread his opposition across a period of many years if he is to have a chance of succeeding. ~ Roger Zelazny

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man. ~ Thomas Mann

Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As night fell he still lingered in the streets, reluctant to go back to the inn. He heard a man and a girl talking together merrily as they came down the street past him towards the town square, and all at once he turned, for he knew the man's voice.

He followed and caught up with the pair, coming up beside them in the late twilight lit only by distant lantern-gleams. The girl stepped back, but the man stared at him and then flung up the staff he carried, holding it between them as a barrier to ward off the threat or act of evil. And that was somewhat more than Ged could bear. His voice shook a little as he said, "I thought you would know me, Vetch."

Even then Vetch hesitated for a moment.

"I do know you," he said, and lowered the staff and took Ged's hand and hugged him round the shoulders-" I do know you! Welcome, my friend, welcome! What a sorry greeting I gave you, as if you were a ghost coming up from behind– and I have waited for you to come, and looked for you- ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Scientists are wont to assume that myths and God-ideas are creations of primitive man, and that as spiritual culture "advances", this myth-forming power is shed. In reality it is the exact opposite, … this ability of a soul to fill its world with shapes, traits and symbols - like and consistent amongst themselves - belongs most definitely not to the world-age of the primitives but exclusively to the springtimes of great Cultures. Every myth of the great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. It is the first formative act of that spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There - it must be. ~ Oswald Spengler

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Processionalism is primary - how you get from one place to another, the relationships and effects of spaces as you move about in them. That's worked out awfully well in the State Theater. I'm a 'straight-in' man myself; I'm too nervous, I like to know where I am. I also like to know where I'm going. ~ Philip Johnson

The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another. ~ Azar Nafisi

If you are afraid of the sunlight, you ain't a good man! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

My friend says to me:
But what can we do? Already giving up.
To be aware is already something,
I say. Consciousness rarely
leaves us unmoved. Or unmoving.
And so it is with this revelation
of what has been happening
to our children, all of them,
and especially to our boys.
The beast in so-called
civilized man
is more lethal, sinister,
grotesque and cunning
than I would have believed:

And what is it, anyhow, this beast?
How does it manifest
in every age
to plague our republic
from shadows
it projects
as light? ~ Alice Walker

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

You know what?" I said, snapping out of my thoughts. "I've never been good at describing things. What do you look like?"

"I look like a man who wants to f**k you. ~ Whitney G.

In fact, the laboratory may be the greatest friend to dumb animals. As science advances, the lives of animals will improve as we depend less and less on their labor and no longer ignore their conditions in order to improve ours. You know, there is much to learn from animals if we are ever to be truly industrial creatures. The beaver is the finest builder of bridges and the silkworm a better weaver than any man or woman. God gave industry perfectly to the caterpillar while we must learn our arts. That is technology--our way to become closer to being like animals. ~ Matthew Pearl

What's all this about sin, eh?'
'That,' I said, very sick. 'Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.' And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.
'Music,' said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. 'So you're keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?'
'It can't be helped,' said Dr. Branom. 'Each man kills the thing he loves ... ~ Anthony Burgess

I wanted to apologize."
His gaze lifted from her bosom. He remembered those breasts in his hands. "For what?"
"For deceiving you as I did. I misunderstood the nature of our relationship and behaved like a spoiled little girl. It was a terrible mistake and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me."
A terrible mistake? A mistake to be sure, but terrible? "There is nothing to forgive," he replied with a tight smile. "We were both at fault."
"Yes," she agreed with a smile of her own. "You are right. Can we be friends again?"
"We never stopped." At least that much was true. He might have played the fool, might have taken advantage of her, but he never ceased caring for her. He never would.
Rose practically sighed in relief. Grey had to struggle to keep his eyes on her face. "Good. I'm so glad you feel that way. Because I do so want your approval when I find the man I'm going to marry."
Grey's lips seized, stuck in a parody of good humor. "The choice is ultimately yours, Rose."
She waved a gloved hand. "Oh, I know that, but your opinion meant so much to Papa, and since he isn't here to guide me, I would be so honored if you would accept that burden as well as the others you've so obligingly undertaken."
Help her pick a husband? Was this some kind of cruel joke? What next, did she want his blessing?
She took both of his hands in hers. "I know this is rather premature, but next to Papa you have been the most important man in ~ Kathryn Smith

The white man has settled like a locust over Africa, and, like the locusts in early morning, cannot take flight for the heaviness of the dew on their wings. But the dew that weights the white man is the money that he makes from our labor. ~ Doris Lessing

Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase. ~ Saint-John Perse

It takes a brave man to be truly mad. ~ Atticus

Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. ~ William James

True, Christ said, "The poor ye have always with you," and it is probable that we shall always need to support by charity the crippled, the insane, and the unfortunate, but it is a certain indication of rottenness in any civilization that makes charity necessary for a man or woman who is able and willing to work. ~ Louis Albert Banks

Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That's what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product. ~ Fisher Amelie

Of a man who only wills the Good out of fear of punishment, it is necessary to say with special emphasis, that he fears what a man should not and ought not to fear: loss of money, loss of reputation, misjudgment by others, neglect, the world's judgment, the ridicule of fools, the laughter of the frivolous, the cowardly whining of consideration, the inflated triviality of the moment, the fluttering mist-forms of vapor. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

They were very upset when I said that the thing of greatest importance to mathematics in Europe was the discovery by Tartaglia that you can solve a cubic equation-which, altho it is very little used, must have been psychologically wonderful because it showed a modern man could do something no ancient Greek could do, and therefore helped in the renaissance which was the freeing of man from the intimidation of the ancients-what they are learning in school is to be intimidated into thinking they have fallen so far below their super ancestors. ~ Richard Feynman

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search. ~ William Shakespeare

Only God can fully satisfy the hungry heart of man. ~ Hugh Black

A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Man treats woman as his own property and not as being capable of feelings, like himself. The way man treats women is much worse than the way landlords treat servants and the high-caste treat the low-caste. These treat them so demeaningly only in situations mutually affecting them; but men treat cruelly and as slaves, from their birth till death. ~ Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

Sits like a man, but smiles like a reptile. ~ David Bowie

It made him feel like less of a man. And given how much less of a man he'd felt the past several weeks, that was really saying something. He was surprised someone from the Man Club hadn't come by to revoke his dick and balls. ~ Heidi Betts

Im not gay, but the man in my bed last night was. ~ Tom DeLonge