...what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principles — groping in the dark — acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Simplify life as one might, one could not wholly escape its enormous complication.

There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that's the truth

This, to a busy mind like his, was a truly deplorable situation; and had he not been a man of inflexible morals and regular habits, there would have been great danger of his taking to politics or drinking — both which pernicious vices we daily see men driven to by mere spleen and idleness.

He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.

What a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad.

Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.

A man who wishes to profess at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.

When a man is set in authority over others, everything conspires to rob him of his sense of justice and reason.

Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in worldwide disorientation and dissociation.

There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty. But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility.

d’un homme qui a perdu tout ce qu’il aimait et qui, depuis, n’est plus tout à fait de ce monde.