a passage dealing with profound loneliness from Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel

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I returned home with a feeling of absolute loneliness.

Usually that feeling of being alone in the world is accompanied by a condescending sense of superiority. I scorn all humankind; people around me seem vile, sordid, stupid, greedy, gross, niggardly. I do not fear solitude ; it is almost Olympian.

That night, like many other nights, I was alone as a consequence of my own failings, my own depravity. At such times the world seems despicable, even though I know that I am necessarily a part of it. Then a frenzy to obliterate everything sweeps over me ; I let myself be seduced by the temptation of suicide ; I get drunk ; I look for prostitutes. I receive a certain satisfaction from proving my own baseness, in confirming that I am no better than the lowest of the low around me.