"we talked about the nature of good until almost one!"

It seems as if the highest efforts of the most intelligent people produce a negative result; one cannot honestly be anything...

Why were the gifted people the most barren? Why were the most stimulating of friendships also the most deadening? Why was it all so negative? Why did these young men make one feel that one could not honestly be anything?

--Virginia Woolf, 'Moments of Being'