“If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

“Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

“It would ’a’ been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.”

“The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.”

“We can't all be heros because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”

“Man will do MANY things to get himself loved. Man will do ALL things to get himself envied.”

“and so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.”