Why have I lowered myself, accepting the sops of the public?
Why have I worked like a machine for twelve years in succession in order to study?
Why have I swallowed for twelve long years in the Gymnasium and the University the dry and tedious trash and the contradictory nonsense which is absolutely useless to me?
In order to become feuilleton-writer, to play the clown from day to day, entertaining the public and convincing myself that that is necessary and useful to them.

Where is the powder of my youth?
I have fired off all the charge of my soul at three copecks a shot.

What faith have I acquired for myself?
Only faith in the fact that everything in this life is worthless, that everything must be broken, destroyed.

What do I love?
Myself.

And I feel that the object of my love does not deserve my love.
What can I accomplish ?" He almost wept, and kept on scratching his breast and his neck with his thin, feeble hands.
But sometimes he was seized with a flow of courage, and then he spoke in a different spirit: "I?
Oh, no, my song is not yet sung to the end! My breast has imbibed something, and I'll hiss like a whip! Wait, I'll drop the newspaper, I'll start to do serious work, and write one small book, which I will entitle 'The Passing of the Soul'; there is a prayer by that name, it is read for the dying.