You were not altogether joking. That’s true. The question is still fretting your heart, and not answered. But the martyr likes sometimes to divert himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair itself. Meanwhile, in your despair, you, too, divert yourself with magazine articles, and discussions in society, though you don’t believe your own arguments, and with an aching heart mock at them inwardly…. That question you have not answered, and it is your great grief, for it clamours for an answer.“
The Brothers Karamazov. Illustrated edition
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
