A House of Gentlefolk by Ivan Turgenev — Read

Lavretsky spent a day and a half at Vassilyevskoe, and employed almost all the time in wandering about the neighbourhood. He could not stop long in one place: he was devoured by anguish; he was torn unceasingly by impotent violent impulses. He remembered the feeling which had taken possession of him the day after his arrival in the country; he remembered his plans then and was intensely exasperated with himself. What had been able to tear him away from what he recognised as his duty -- as the one task set before him in the future? The thirst for happiness -- again the same thirst for happiness.

"It seems Mihalevitch was right," he thought; "you wanted a second time to taste happiness in life," he said to himself, "you forgot that it is a luxury, an undeserved bliss, if it even comes once to a man. It was not complete, it was not genuine, you say; but prove your right to full, genuine happiness. Look round and see who is happy, who enjoys life about you? Look at that peasant going to the mowing; is he contented with his fate? . What! would you care to change places with him? Remember your mother; how infinitely little she asked of life, and what a life fell to her lot. You were only bragging it seems when you said to Panshin that you had come back to Russia to cultivate the soil; you have come back to dangle after young girls in your old age. Directly the news of your freedom came, you threw up everything, forgot everything; you ran like a boy after a butterfly. ".