Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a … - Mark Twain

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.

I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.