“There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish
“I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom, one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise
“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness
“This is something that I cannot get over, that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character
“When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
“The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend
“It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.
“Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum