The Antoninos

 "Being an educated man, he was very familiar with the correct procedure for solving all kinds of problems.

[...]

Of all the thoughts lazily drifting through his mind only two did not irritate him: one was that he had the power to kill himself at any moment and the other - that the pain would not last more than three days. The latter he know from experience".

Anton Chekhov, A nervous breakdown

"He thought how much life demands in return for those insignificant or very ordinary blessings that it can bestow. For example, to receive a university chair in one's late thirties, to be a run-of-the-mill professor, expounding in turgid, boring, ponderous language commonplace ideas that were not even original, in brief, to achieve the status of a third-rate scholar he, Kovrin, had had to study fifteen years - working day and night - suffer severe mental illness, experience a broken marriage and do any number of stupid, unjust things that were best forgotten. Kovrin realized quite clearly now that he was a nobody and eagerly accepted the fact since, in his opinion, every man should be content with what he is."  

Anton Chekhov, The black monk