For, work as you will, there is no chance of a new and better world until the old be utterly destroyed. - George Gissing

To stab the root of a young tree, to hang crushing burdens upon it, to rend off its early branches — that is not the treatment likely to result in growth such as nature purposed. There will come of it a vicious formation, and the principle applies also to the youth of men.

[A] sensitive man who no longer finds himself on equal terms with his natural associates, shrinks into loneliness, and learns with some surprise how very willing people are to forget his existence. London is a wilderness abounding in anchorites — voluntary or constrained.

It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.