No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust
simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.
Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating
torment, its black thoughts, its somber and brooding ferocity? Well,
I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly.
It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of
one's soul--than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these
chaps too had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I
would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst
the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me--the fact
dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a
ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater--when I thought
of it--than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this
savage clamor that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind
whiteness of the fog. - from Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
