Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of …

Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness,at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential.This eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease,developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime,continued with equal violence at the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after,according to the individual case,and then passed off like any other disease.

Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky