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Quotation from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky (spoken by The Underground Man)

Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter II, trans. Constance Garnett (1918)

Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky

The narrator's thesis that the over-developed self-awareness of a cultivated man of his century paralyses action.

Citation: "I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness." — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter II, trans. Constance Garnett (1918). (id notes-from-underground-q2)

Portrait: Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky by Vasily Perov, Vasily Perov, Public domain.

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Quote card: I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going