Smerdyakov

“Here I've been living along, year after year, forty of them behind me, with a wife and children, and not a soul in the world to talk to. Come moments when I think I just have to pour out my soul to somebody, to say all there is to say, and — no one to say it to! If you tell it to her—the wife, that is — it don't reach her. What's it to her? She's got her children, the house, her cares. She's outside my soul. Your wife's your friend till the first baby comes ... that's how it is. And in general, my wife—well, you can see for yourself—no fun with her—just a lump of flesh, damn it all! Ah, brother, what a heartache!”
― Maxim Gorky

“There are people who thirst for blood like tigers. Any man who has once tasted this unlimited power over the blood, over the body and spirit of a human creature like himself, a creature created in the same image and subject to the same law of Christ; any man who has tasted this power, this boundless opportunity to humiliate most bitterly another being made in the image of God — becomes the servant instead of the master of his own emotions. Tyranny is a habit. It can and does eventually develop into a disease. I believe that the best of men may grow coarse, degrade to the level of a beast by sheer force of habit. Blood and power intoxicate one, they develop callousness and lust. The greatest perversions grow finally acceptable and even delicious to mind and heart. The man and the citizen perish in the tyrant for ever and the return to human dignity, remorse and spiritual rebirth becomes scarcely possible to him. Besides, the example and mere possibility of arbitrary power are contagious; they are indeed a great temptation. A society which regards such things calmly is already corrupt at the roots.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“I believe in the lust of the flesh and the incurable desolation of the soul.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Gertrud

“For youth, the moon is a promise of all those tremendous things which await it, for older people a memento that the promise was never kept, a reminder of all that broke and went to pieces...
And what is moonshine? Secondhand sunshine. Diluted, counterfeit.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas