Sign in with Facebook
“the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!”
― Notes from the Underground
― Notes from the Underground
“And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!”
― Notes from Underground
― Notes from Underground
“The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”
― Notes from Underground
― Notes from Underground
“Your story is not to be written as a novel you are a collection of the people you’ve become and the people you’ve yet to be a series of stories told in sequence sometimes with rhyme and sometimes without reason a neverending exploration of every corner of your potential please don’t worry if you cannot converge your old selves you are not meant to understand them you are only meant to set them free”
― Ceremony
― Ceremony
“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,”
― Notes from Underground
― Notes from Underground
Robyn’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Robyn’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
309 books
|
129 friends
724 books
|
283 friends
2,608 books
|
58 friends
486 books
|
56 friends
548 books
|
72 friends
1,364 books
|
361 friends
297 books
|
239 friends
403 books
|
238 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Robyn
Lists liked by Robyn
