“No one had seen him, even once, being any different from what he always was, whether on the street or at home. Had he but once showed any concern for anything, had he got roaring drink and burst out laughing in his drunken state, had he even abandoned himself to wild grotesque revelry of the kind a brigand abandons himself to in a drunken moment-but there was not the faintest shadow of any such thing in him. There was nothing at all in him, nothing either evil or good, and there was something dreadful in this absence of anything.”
Nikolay Gogol, “Dead Souls”, 1842.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 