When a man comes not merely to tolerate, but to boast of the stains that the world has flung upon him; when he wears his spots as if they were jewels; when he flaunts his unscrupulousness, and his cynicism and his disbelief and his hard-heartedness in your face as the signs and badges of his superiority; when to be innocent and unsuspicious and sensitive seems to be ridiculous and weak; when it is reputable to show that we are men of the world by exhibiting the stains that the world has left upon our reputation, our conduct, and our heart, then we understand how flagrant is the danger; then we see how hard it must be to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

In order to know about the illnesses of society, you have to know what men are suffering from, how they suffer.

There is one [disease] which is widespread, and from which men rarely escape. This disease varies in degree in different men … I refer to this: that every person thinks his mind … more clever and more learned than it is … I have found that this disease has attacked many an intelligent person … They … express themselves [not only] upon the science with which they are familiar, but upon other sciences about which they know nothing … If met with applause … so does the disease itself become aggravated.

Commonly we say a judgement falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.

Most men mock what they can never aspire to.

No man should be a perfect physician to any but himself.

Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.

For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.

Man is so made that he cannot be satisfied with less than the highest, and that he must be beaten down before he can be raised up.

. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.