m a d a r a :)’s Reviews > Notes from Underground > Status Update

“It has been said that man takes revenge because he finds justice in doing so. This means that he has found the primary cause, found the rationale- namely, justice. It follows that he is no longer worried about anything, and so he takes his revenge calmly and successfully, in the conviction that what he's doing is both honest and fair. (..) if I were to embark on revenge, it would be merely out of spite.”

“My jokes, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, hit-or-miss, lacking in self-confidence.
But this is because I have no self-esteem. Can someone who is self-conscious have any degree of self-esteem?”

“The delight that I felt came precisely from being too acutely aware of my own degradation, (..) that you'll never become a different person - that even if you still had sufficient time or belief to change into something else, you probably wouldn't want to change. And if you did want to, you probably wouldn't do anything about it, because, in fact, there's simply nothing to change into.”

“I used to work in the Civil Service, but i don’t any more. I was a spiteful civil servant. I was rude and took pleasure in being rude. I never accepted bribes, you know, so I had to find some other reward, even if it was only that.” … “I lied when I said just now that I was a spiteful civil servant. I lied out of spite.”