When a man, however passively, becomes an obstacle to the fulfillment of a woman's desires, he becomes an odious thing in her eyes, - or will, given … - Theodore Dreiser

The mood of Mason throughout the entire direct examination was that of a restless harrier anxious to be off at the heels of its prey — of a foxhound within the last leap of its kill. A keen and surging desire to shatter this testimony, to show it to be from start to finish the tissue of lies that in part at least it was, now animated him. And no sooner had Jephson concluded than he leaped up and confronted Clyde, who, seeing him blazing with this desire to undo him, felt as though he was about to be physically attacked.

Theodore Dreiser. An American Tragedy

what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?

was locked up here and they would not let him go. There was a system — a horrible routine system — as long since he had come to feel it to be so. It was iron. It moved automatically like a machine without the aid or the hearts of men. These guards! They with their letters, their inquiries, their pleasant and yet really hollow words, their trips to do little favors, or to take the men in and out of the yard or to their baths — they were iron, too — mere machines, automatons, pushing and pushing and yet restraining and restraining one — within these walls, as ready to kill as to favor in case of opposition — but pushing, pushing, pushing — always toward that little door over there, from which there was no escape — no escape — just on and on — until at last they would push him through it never to return! Never to return!