1 Of course, that is, if he is intelligent.
2 They took rank for intelligence; even at sixteen they were already talking about a snug berth.
3 In fact, I would even have put up with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have been thought strikingly intelligent.
4 And what was worst of all, I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite satisfied if I could have looked intelligent.
5 Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything.
6 Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.
7 This was a regular martyrdom, a continual, intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant and direct sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty, disgusting fly--more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in feeling than any of them, of course--but a fly that was continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone.