Fifth Deadly Sin: ENVY or VAINGLORY (acedia, id est anxietas seu taedium cordis, et conodoxia, id est jactancia seu vana Gloria). This is Mr Everybody, the man in the street, the perfect citizen of a democracy, the man who wears mass-produced clothes, eats mass-produced food, kisses by the clock and owns a little 5 h.p. car with a registered licence-plate. He is undistinguished and indistinguishable in every way. He votes. It was Gogol who identified him as the latest personification of the Devil, who tries to pass himself off as your fellow creature, your brother. He is the cuckold of the twentieth century! He is universal, he says. And that is the danger.
Watch out, Blaise, there is a lot of talk of making a United States of Europe and Soviet of the East, and they will not want any more free citizens of the world, like you.
Blaise Cendrars, Planus [1948], ed. and trans. Nina Rootes (London: Peter Owen, 1972), 116. Original emphasis.