The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind.

One of the great reasons for the popularity of strikes is that they give the suppressed self a sense of power. For once the human tool knows itself a man, able to stand up and speak a word or strike a blow.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.