Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

The author will also have to suffer accusations from so-called patriots who sit quietly in their corners busy with completely irrelevant things, saving up a nice nest egg, feathering their nests at others’ expense, but the moment something happens which they consider offensive to the fatherland, or if any book should appear in which unpleasant truths are sometimes uttered, they come running out of their corners, like spiders which have caught a fly in their webs, and raise a sudden hue and cry: “Isn’t it bad to bring all this into the open, to go around proclaiming it? After all, everything described here is all to do with us: Is that good? And what will foreigners say? It’s no fun to hear bad opinions of oneself, is it? Do they think it doesn’t hurt us? Do they think we are unpatriotic?”