There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

"I love mankind," he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular."

People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.

And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.

Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.