It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

Writing was in its origin, the voice of an absent person.

Only a rebuke that 'has something in it' will sting, will have the power to stir our feelings, not the other sort, as we know.

The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.

The idea of men's receiving an intimation of their connection with the world around them through an immediate feeling which is from the outset directed to that purpose sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric of our psychology that one is justified in attempting to discover a psycho-analytic - that is, a genetic - explanation of such a feeling.

History is just new people making old mistakes.

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.