We figure to ourselves The thing we like; and then we build it up, As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,— For thought is tired of wandering o’… - Henry Taylor

Shy and proud men … are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.

The pretext for indecisiveness is commonly mature deliberation; but in reality indecisive men occupy themselves less in deliberation than others; for to him who fears to decide, deliberation (which has a foretaste of that fear) soon becomes intolerably irksome, and the mind escapes from the anxiety of it into alien themes.

Where there are large powers with little ambition (which will happen sometimes, though seldom) nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes; for she has given the machinery without the vis motrix.