Notes from Underground and the Double

Love is a sacred secret, and ought to be kept hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens. It is holier that way, and better.

There’s another thing, Liza: people only like to count their sorrows, they don’t count their happinesses. But if they reckoned as they ought to, they would see that everybody gets his share of everything.

Now it is quite clear to me that, because of my infinite vanity and the consequent demands I made on myself, I very often looked at myself with frantic dislike, sometimes amounting to disgust, and therefore attributed the same attitude to everybody else.