ceci

“How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“For the direct, lawful, immediate fruit of consciousness is inertia – that is, a conscious sitting with folded arms. I’ve already mentioned this above. I repeat, I emphatically repeat: ingenuous people and active figures are all active simply because they are dull and narrow minded. How to explain it? Here’s how: as a consequence of their narrow-mindedness, they take the most immediate and secondary causes for the primary ones, and thus become convinced more quickly and easily than others that they have found an indisputable basis for their doings, and so they feel at ease; and that, after all, is the main thing. For in order to begin to act, one must first be completely at ease, so that no more doubts remain. Well, and how am I, for example, to set myself at ease? Where are the primary causes on which I can rest, where are my bases? Where am I going to get them? I exercise thinking, and, consequently, for me every primary cause immediately drags with it yet another, still more primary one, and so on ad infinitum. Such is precisely the essence of all consciousness and thought. So,”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“Beautiful feelings make bad literature. In which case, this precious state of prose is proof that I'm no devil after all. Ah, blessed be the man who coined this phrase! It is a treasure of the language. An author can get away with using it but once in his career. Sad to say. The first time, it's endearing. If you insist on using it a second or a third time, though, dear reader, hiding behind it like a shield, you can expect nothing but misery.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“Thus I return to Chestov. A commentator relates a remark of his that deserves interest: “The only true solution,” he said, “is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. Otherwise, what need would we have of God? We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays