The nub of catastrophe

An overly refined conscience, a predisposition toward guilt in the face of his own desires, led a good man to act in curiously underhanded ways, in ways that compromised his own goodness. This is the nub of catastrophe, I think. He accepted everyone else's frailties, but when it came to himself he demanded perfection, an almost superhuman rigor in even the smallest acts. The result was disappointment, a dumbfounding awareness of his own flawed humanity, which drove him to place even more stringent demands on his conduct, which in turn led to ever more suffocating disappointments. If he had learned to love himself a little more, he wouldn't have had the power to cause so much unhappiness around him.

Paul Auster
Leviathan