"I kept myself very much to myself, as one does if one is old and doesn't much care for the people round about." - Paul Scott

She laughed. "You haven't changed a bit. You never could stand criticism or leg-pulling. That's why you bored me, Ian. That was the trouble with your generation of so-called intellectual young men. All of you unmitigated, bloody bores with sloppy ideas and no remotest idea how to come to terms with life. When you found life coming to terms with you, you all wondered what the hell had hit you."

In general men are very thoughtless creatures. Single-minded, rather. That is what life demands they should be, I think. You only have to take the example of primitive man as hunter and breadwinner. Life demands that he should be singleminded, and nature compensates him by giving him a supreme self-confidence in his ability as a hunter. All his thought is directed towards that end, and at the end is food for himself and his family, and protection for them all. His wife, on the other hand, depends on him for food and protection, but can't actually share his self-confidence from the inside where it matters. Oh - she can believe in him through the sort of vicarious self-confidence something like love can bring, but nature demands that she keeps alert for any slightest sign of failure in the man, because she depends on him for life and livelihood.
"And so, Mr Canning, your so-called intuitive woman takes to watching and interpreting every shadow of expression on her man's face. If he's losing confidence, her training in observation detects it as surely as a wart on the end of his nose, and so she bolsters him up, praises him, pushes him, you see, into regaining confidence - and all for the most selfish reasons as you see - and off he goes with his chest out thinking what a fine fellow he is. He might even pause to consider how understanding his wife was, and no doubt he'd then shake his head in mystification and tell his neighbour that woman's instinct was a thing to marvel at.
"But then the talent itself has its roots in anxiety, hasn't it? Just as a man's single-mindedness has its roots in hunger.

"I often look back now and regret that I never took my courage in both hands and went out into the world. That's really what a chap should do, Canning. Get out and look. Otherwise," again he paused, "Otherwise you never really see yourself, old man. And it's all so small and petty. A man isn't a man any longer."