By Losing Thee Awhile

Without attempting to justify the hell within him, for within him hell he brings, I nevertheless have to ask myself 'are you any better?' Only on two or three occasions in my life have I come face-to-face with such bare truths, and on each I've swallowed, accepted, denied and ignored. Principle increasingly seems an absurd notion: an assumption upon which I appear to base everything; and yet when called upon, my so-called morals cower behind convenience, shudder beneath shame. Thee father first they sung omnipotent, immutable, immortal, infinite, now your tawdry mortality reveals itself in the sweatstale certainty of blokish secrecy. And again I ask 'are you any better?' I am now discovering that reason, unable in the first place to prevent our misfortunes, is even less equal to consoling us for them.

Milton - Paradise Lost
Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses