Granted, granted I’m a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what’s to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble — that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void. (Notes from Underground, 1864, Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)

And to run around throwing yourself on other people’s necks out of love for mankind, and burn with tears of tenderness — that is merely a fashion. And why should I necessarily love my neighbor or your future mankind, which I’ll never see, which will not know about me, and which in its turn will rot without leaving any trace or remembrance (time means nothing here), when the earth in its turn will become an icy stone and fly through airless space together with an infinite multitude of identical icy stones, that is more meaningless than anything one can possibly imagine! (The Adolescent, 1875, Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)