In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.

And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better — cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

I want to suffer so that I may love.

...one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

But people will laugh at all sorts of things.

I know you'll probably get angry with me for that, shout, stamp your feet: "speak just for yourself and your miseries in the underground, and don't go saying 'we all.'" Excuse me, gentleman, but I am not justifying myself with this allishness. As far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway, and, what's more, you've taken your cowardice for good sense, and found comfort in thus deceiving yourselves. So that I, perhaps, come out even more "living" than you.