Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.

Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand!

If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

Only a very small percentage can regard conditions from any but a selfish point of view or conceive of any but their own shoe-pinch.