Poor man. Poor mankind. - William Faulkner

But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.

It's not when you realise that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.

He turned the pages in steady progression, though now and then he would seem to linger upon one page, one line, perhaps one word. He would not look up then. He would not move, apparently arrested and held immobile by a single word which had perhaps not yet impacted, his whole being suspended by the single trivial combination of letters in quiet and sunny space, so that hanging motionless and without physical weight he seemed to watch the slow flowing of time beneath him, thinking All I wanted was peace thinking,