" I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead