... for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency — which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours — to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.

I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

Scattered... over the breasts of the surrounding mountains there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes... or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. ...[I]t seemed almost as if mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky... The great hills played a concert among themselves, each constituting a strain of airy sweetness.