Antithesis

Placing opposite ideas or words side by side, so that one illuminates the other through contrast.

In Notes from Underground

I have not been able to become not merely wicked, but not even anything at all: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor honest, neither a hero nor an insect.

The pairs «wicked» and «good», «scoundrel» and «honest», «hero» and «insect» oppose moral and size extremes, and the sentence denies them all together. The contrast shows that, for him, neither pole fits.

Part One: The Underground, the underground man

Of course I won't break through a wall like that with my forehead, if I really lack the strength to break through, but I also won't resign myself to it just because I have a stone wall before me and my strength was not enough.

Part One: The Underground, the underground man

reason is only reason and satisfies only the rational faculty of man, while will is the manifestation of all of life, that is, of all human life, with reason and with all its itches. And although our life, in that manifestation, often ends up as some little mess, it is life, and not merely the extraction of a square root.

Part One: The Underground, the underground man

that I am a fly before all this world, a nasty, useless fly, more intelligent, more developed, and more noble than all, that goes without saying, but a fly that gives way to everyone the whole time, humiliated by all and insulted by all.

Part Two: Apropos of Wet Snow, the underground man

Either a hero or mud, there was no middle ground. That, precisely, is what ruined me.

Part Two: Apropos of Wet Snow, the underground man

As for me, all I did was carry to the extreme, in my life, what you did not dare carry even halfway, and you still took your cowardice for prudence and consoled yourselves with it, deceiving yourselves.

Part Two: Apropos of Wet Snow, the underground man