Twenty-four
The man who loses his temper often thinks he is doing something rather fine and majestic. On the contrary, so far is this from being the fact, he is merely making an ass of himself.
Twenty-five
The female sex is prone to be inaccurate and careless of apparently trivial detail, because this is the general tendency of mankind. In men destined for a business or a profession, the proclivity is harshly discouraged at an early stage. In women, who usually are not destined for anything whatever, it enjoys a merry life, and often refuses to be improved out of existence when the sudden need arises. No one by taking thought can deracinate the mental habits of, say, twenty years.
Twenty-six
Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of human qualities—and its general effect on the progress of the world is not entirely beneficent—but it is the greatest of human qualities in friendship.
Twenty-seven
There is a certain satisfaction in hopelessness amid the extreme of misery. You press it to you as the martyr clutched the burning fagot. You enjoy it. You savour, piquantly, your woe, your shame, your abjectness, the failure of your philosophy. You celebrate the perdition of the man in you. You want to talk about it brazenly; even to exaggerate it, and to swagger over it.
Twenty-eight
The great public is no fool. It is huge and simple and slow in mental processes, like a good-humoured giant, easy to please and grateful for diversion. But it has a keen sense of its own dignity; it will not be trifled with; it resents for ever the tongue in the cheek.