Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy

The state of sin isn't noble, it doesn't care whether it would make a good story to do this, it just reduces man to its vilest being. In the book, he didn't sleep with that first woman, when he was young- when it would have changed his life- but slept with a nobody of a girl, all of a sudden, just like that. After all his years, he "fell" for a worthless creature. Doesn't that show that desire is just heartless and cruel, and that lust doesn't care who it is, and whether it is valuable. Sin can't ever be beautiful, because it would settle for anything, no matter what it was.

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This is an extremely important story by Tolstoy, that made me connect to it multiple novels because it is so classic. It describes this incredible vulgarity that destroys the "Good and the Beautiful" in the most grotesque way...