“‘Good, that,’ he said to himself, while her eyes rested upon him, black and impenetrable like the mental caverns where revolutionary thought should sit plotting the violent way of its dream of changes. As if anything could be changed! In this world of men nothing can be changed–neither happiness nor misery. They can only be displaced at the cost of corrupted consciences and broken lives–a futile game for arrogant philosophers and sanguinary triflers.”
Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes