To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible of punishments so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it and dread it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.

This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.

Or renounce life altogether! Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love.

There is no virtue if there is no immortality.

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.

I have no self-respect. But can a man of acute sensibility respect himself at all?