Quote by Ivan Turgenev: “Each man's happiness is built on the misfortune of another.”

This cynical observation suggests a darker, zero-sum view of human prosperity, where one person's joy often comes at the expense of someone else's suffering. It implies an inherent unfairness in the distribution of well-being, highlighting the competitive or interdependent nature of happiness in society.

Turgenev often explored the moral complexities and social injustices within the Russian gentry and serfdom, where the leisure of some was directly dependent on the exploitation and suffering of others.

Russian novelist and playwright best known for Fathers and Sons, a novel that gave the word 'nihilism' its cultural currency. He was the first Russian author to gain a wide international readership, and he spent much of his later life in Western Europe as a literary ambassador for Russian culture.