for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.

She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.

It is the most deplorable tribute when the succession of an inferior ruler turns his predecessor, who was intolerable while he lived, into someone whose integrity and goodness are sadly missed.

He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.
For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness.

This Guph was really a clever rascal, and it seems a pity he was so bad, for in a good cause he might have accomplished much.

He who is not enviable is not admirable.

I love him, oh! I love him; but he won't let himself be loved.

Finally, there was the impediment of his nature. In the secret parts of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot explain. He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too long ago. He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo’s, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

...a great man. But...not quite great enough.

A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.