Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to tremendous difficulties.

For what else is tragedy than the portrayal in tragic verse of the sufferings of men who have attached high value to external things?

Some men, by dint of excessive egotism, manage to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great men indeed: they publish their acquirements so loudly in people’s ears, and keep up their own praises so incessantly, that the world’s applause is actually taken by storm.

The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.

by indignities men come to dignities

But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad. . . . Everest

A clever man reaps some benefit from the worst catastrophe, and a fool can turn even good luck to his disadvantage.

There is something noble as well as terrible about suicide. The downfall of many men is not dangerous, for they fall like children, too near the ground to do themselves harm. But when a great man breaks, he has soared up to the heavens, espied some inaccessible paradise, and then fallen from a great height. The forces that make him seek peace from the barrel of a gun cannot be placated. How many young talents confined to an attic room wither and perish for lack of a friend, a consoling wife, alone in the midst of a million fellow humans, while throngs of people weary of gold are bored with their possessions.

Men of high and low status, clever men, and artistic men all vie to exhibit their merit as loyal servants, but become limp and craven when it comes to actually sacrificing their lives when calamity strikes. This is inexcusable behavior indeed.

It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.

There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.

Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.

The lines I’m referring to, Lewis, are that Triumph and Disaster are the same. They’re both impostors because they are momentary. More important is becoming a man of convictions. Lasting joy comes from that.

It has always seemed to me a great pity that man's noblest instincts, his heroic self-sacrifice, his capacity to unite with his neighbor in a common cause, emerge only in times of disaster, such as war and fire and flood.