Fyodor Dostoevsky — Quote from Notes from Underground
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.”
Notes from Underground (1864)
Concepts: meaning, absurd, escape
Resonant Quotes
- “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five These quotes form a perfect dialectical tension between the human attraction to suffering as meaning-making and the d...
- “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Ju...” — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Dostoevsky's insight into humanity's perverse love of suffering complicates Camus's binary question by suggesting tha...
- “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One m...” — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Both recognize humanity's paradoxical capacity to find meaning or even love in what appears to be pure suffering, tho...
- “People never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as ano...” — Albert Camus, The Stranger These quotes present contrasting responses to existential stagnation—Camus's character accepts his static condition w...
- “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort o...” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science Nietzsche's anguish over divine absence resonates with Dostoevsky's insight that humans perversely embrace the very s...
- “There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it can...” — Franz Kafka, The Zuerau Aphorisms Dostoevsky's insight about humanity's perverse love of suffering illuminates why we persist in Kafka's impossible que...
- “In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.” — Franz Kafka, The Zuerau Aphorisms Kafka's recommendation to side with the world against oneself echoes Dostoevsky's observation about humanity's love o...
- “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness ...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Dostoevsky's insight about humanity's perverse love of suffering offers a psychological mechanism that might explain ...