DOSTOEVSKY – 2

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The world says: “You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.” This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Forgive me… for my love -for ruining you with my love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“His position at that moment was like the position of a man standing over a frightful precipice, when the earth breaks away under him, is rocking, shifting, sways for a last time, and falls, drawing him into the abyss, and meanwhile the unfortunate man has neither the strength nor the firmness of spirit to jump back, to take his eyes from the yawning chasm; the abyss draws him, and he finally leaps into it himself, himself hastening the moment of his own perdition.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double and The Gambler

“I’m a master of speaking silently—all my life I’ve spoken silently and I’ve lived through entire tragedies in silence.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i’m masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“I left proud, but with my spirit crushed.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One

“I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches – what is the use of praying? – it’s only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out… I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep…”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“How thin she is in her coffin, how sharp her nose has grown! Her eyelashes lie straight as arrows. And, you know, when she fell, nothing was crushed, nothing was broken! Nothing but that “handful of blood.” A dessertspoonful, that is. From internal injury. A strange thought: if only it were possible not to bury her? For if they take her away, then… oh, no, it is almost incredible that they take her away! I am not mad and I am not raving – on the contrary, my mind was never so lucid – but what shall I do when again there is no one, only the two rooms, and me alone with the pledges? Madness, madness, madness! I worried her to death, that is what it is!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“People are alone on this earth—that’s the problem!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One

“I’ve always wanted all or nothing!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One

“Silence is always beautiful, and a silent person is always more beautiful than one who talks.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“To love people as they are is impossible. And yet one must. And therefore do good to them, clenching your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes (this last is necessary). Endure evil from them, not getting angry with them if possible, ‘remembering that you, too, are a human being’.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“I was especially happy when, going to bed and covering myself with a blanket, I began, alone now, in the most complete solitude, with no people moving around and not a single sound from them, to re-create life in a different key.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“Reality alone justifies everything.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey
city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“Is it not I myself who am to blame, instead of them?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“You have to be all too basely in love with yourself to write about yourself without shame.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

“There is a crack in my soul, and I can hear it trembling, quivering, stirring deep inside me.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk

“And though I suffer for you, yet it eases my heart to suffer for you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk

“The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Eternal Husband

“Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I want to suffer so that I may love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why — I don’t know.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me — and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter — not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“No man lives, can live, without having some object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“Fierce and solitary he awaited death, mistrustful and hostile to all”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“Here is the world to which I am condemned, in which, despite myself, I must somehow live.’ I said.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“And so I ask myself: ‘Where are your dreams?’ And I shake my head and mutter: ‘How the years go by!’ And I ask myself again: ‘What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,’ I say to myself, ‘how cold it is becoming all over the world!’ And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“. . . finally, I couldn’t imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live—that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea…”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“Here my tears are falling, Nastenka. Let them flow, let them flow – they don’t hurt anybody. They will dry Nastenka.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler

“I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: “I love you,” and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then…well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, for ever, all my life. I knew nothing more!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler

“most men love to see their best friend in abasement; for generally it is on such abasement that friendship is founded.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“One can fall in love and still hate.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Forgive me… for my love -for ruining you with my love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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What it do playa? This week on Thug Notes we diggin deep with Notes from

Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This book’s nameless narrator say. He one sick mothafu**a. But he ain’t got the clap or anything like dat.

The only thing wrong with this fool is he decked out with too much consciousness.

And cuz o dat, this fool miserable and lonely as hell. After philosophozing about man, freedom, rationality and other real talk, our 40 year old recluse start reminiscing bout some sh** that went down when he was in his 20s.

Back in the day, the Underground Man decided to drop in on some old school homie named Zvertov who bout to throw a bangin party.

Thing is, ol Undie ain’t tight with any of Zvertov’s crew no mo. In fact, when they see him lurkin round the party sippin too much sizzurp and actin a fool, they start thinkin “What’s this fool smokin?” They even try to shake him before bringing their sausage fest to the local poon palace.

But the narrator steps to these haters and tails em there anyway. When he arrives, he peeps some rank lookin ho named Liza, takes her to a room, and shows her his Russian Czar, know what I’m sayin?

After doin the nasty, he try to convince Liza not to be turn tricks no mo by gettin all up in her head and messin with her heart.

Later, when the Underground Man kickin back at his spot, Liza rolls in all unannounced. She wanna talk real with him, but all he wanna do is get uppity and preach to her. But eventually, dis fool can’t keep his sh** together and starts weepin.

After tappin dat ass on mo time, he decide he gonna toss her a couple dolla billz to prove that all dat real talk was bullsh** and that she ain’t nothin but a dirty skank.

But Liza shows this fool who really got class and tosses that paper before she leave.

Realizing he actin a serious fool, he runs after Liza to beg forgiveness.

But she loooong gone.

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This book right hur is widely considered the world’s first existentialist novel. Years before Nietzche was jiving his angsty sh**, Dostoevsky was keepin it OG with the creation of the Underground Man.

Ever since the Under-G hit the scene in 1864, righteous playas been using the term “Underground” to spit in the face of the establishment and give all traditional forms of thought a big “fu** you!” Cuz the Underground Man don’t think like the rest of society. Errybody else is just fumble fu**in their way through life and never askin the big questions. But for our boy, dat sh**’s the dank.

And if that’s the way you wanna roll, you gotta open your eyes so wide to the world around you that it hurts. If you can do that, you playing a whole other

game, B. Dat pain you feel when you beefin with reality and get yo sh** wrecked creates consciousness.

Like our boy say “suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.” (234) But barkin with the big dawgs comes at a cost: hyperconsciounsness.

When you can see every angle to a question, you can get so overwhelmed that you don’t know whether to go left or right.

So instead of choosing a direction, our man doesn’t do a damn thing. It ain’t that this fool lazy. He ain’t even that. Hyperconsciousness has made this cat straight up NOTHING. Our boy calls dis “conscious inertia.”

The real joke up in here is that conciousness only comes from the suffering you experience when tryin to connect with other peeps. But when the big C comes creepin through your town, connecting with others becomed damn near impossible. There’s

the rub, blood.

And if that seems like a whack paradox to you, it’s all good cuz the Underground Man is a livin breathin paradox.

Our unreliable narrator say he love to be isolated, yet he jonesin for human contact. He envies yo erryday playa, but he also proud not to be one. He suffers, yet he finds pleasure in it.

All this mess makin him so outta touch with society that lies and dreams are all he got:

So escape this life, dive in to a good book, and hit me up next week, homies. Peace.