Mukeh John-Langba

“She had a remarkable voice which didn’t go with her face at all, a melodious, quavering voice. She said, “If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.” She was right. There was no way out.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence of God.
"Why hast thou done all this? Why hast thou brought me here to die?"
He did not expect an answer, and yet wept because there was no answer and could be none. The pain again grew more acute, but he did not stir and did not call. He said to himself: "Go on! Strike me! But what is this for? What have I done to Thee?"
Then he grew quiet and not only ceased weeping but even held his breath and became all attention. It was as though he were listening not to an audible voice but to the voice of his soul, the the current of thoughts arising within him.
"what is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable of expression in words that he heard.
"what do i want? to live and not to suffer." He answered.
"What do you want? what do you want" he repeated to himself.
And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him.
"to live? how?" asked his inner voice.
"Why, to live as before - well and pleasantly."
as you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice echoed.
And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say, none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had seemed then - none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.
As soon as the period began which had been produced the present Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty.
And the further he departed from childhood, and the nearer he came to the present, the more worthless and doubtful and false were the joys. This began with the School of Law. A little that was really good was still found there - lightheartedness, friendship and hope. But in the upper classes there had already been few of such good moments. Then during the first years of his official career, when he was in the service of the Governor, some pleasant moments again occured: they were memories of love for a woman. then all became confused and still less of what was good. later on again there was no good. the further he went, the less there was. his marriage, a mere accident, then the disenchantment and his wife's bad breath following it. Then the deadly official life and those preoccupations of money, a year of it, and two, then ten, then twenty years. and the longer it lasted, the more deadly it became. "What really happened was I went down hill but thought I was going up!”
― Tolstoy Lev Nikolayevich

“And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.
[. . .]
And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground

“It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. 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.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground