Apropos of the Wet Snow

"I’m sensitive and quick to take offence, like a hunchback or a dwarf, but there have been times when if somebody had given me a slap in the face I might even have been glad of it. I am speaking seriously: I should certainly have known how to find pleasure in it, the pleasure, of course, of despair, but despair can hold the most intense sorts of pleasure when one is strongly conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position."

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Notes from Underground”