excerpt from Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

'What I'm thinking is: here I am, lying under a haystack. . .The tiny little place I occupy is so small in relation to the rest of space where I am not and where it's none of my business; and the amount of time which I'll succeed in living is so insignificant by comparison with the eternity where I haven't been and never will be. . .And yet in this atom, in this mathematical point, the blood circulates, the brain works and even desires something as well. . .What sheer ugliness! What sheer nonsense!'