Dostoevsky at the DMV

"But you can hardly know in practice what's meant by administrative ecstasy -precisely what sort of thing it is." 

"Administrative ecstasy? No, I don't know." 

"It's . . . Vous savez, chez nous. . . En un mot, appoint some insignificant nonentity to a position, say, selling stupid railway tickets, and this nonentity will immediately conclude that he has the right to look down upon you as if he were Jupiter when you come to him to buy a ticket, pour vous montrer son pouvoir. 'Now then,' he says, 'I'll demonstrate my power over you. . .' And it reaches the point of administrative ecstasy in these people."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, and Katz, Michael R., trans. Devils. Oxford University Press, 1999, 58-9