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It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky), page 44. I have been reading this book all summer and have not yet liked it that much, but had to read it for classics book group. When I sat down to read the last part this week for our final discussion, I found that I did not remember anything about the first three parts of the book, so I am attempting to re-read the entire book before Saturday. So far this has been a mixed experience, but on the good side I have been finding all of it much funnier, including this quote, in which, through the words of the elder, Dostoevsky proves that he foresaw the emotional composition of Internet commentors over one hundred years before the Internet was invented.
(Along those same lines see also page 57: “‘I love mankind,’ he said, ‘but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons.’”)
