...people always grow more foolish, unless they take care to grow wiser and wiser... - Nathaniel Hawthorne

What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!

It was one of those moments — which sometimes occur only at the interval of years — when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false — it is impalpable — it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.