I am going to stop reading the Mayor of Casterbridge (and indeed all literature, and maybe reading anything whatsoever any further) – I’m growing sick of these characters, their pettiness, their manipulations, their grovelling, their ignorance, the playthings they exhibit themselves to be in the hands of fate, the creatures of low desires they are, their aspirations to the good life only in terms of what wealth can bestow, … I despise this human mind that can never achieve any nobility of thought as long as it is beset by longing of any kind…fie upon this world, I care not for it, and I royally reject it to not give it any place in my mind or heart.
Know Thyself 