“...the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward.”

“Look down and show some mercy if you can. Look down, look down, upon your fellow man.”

“Benedick looked to the ceiling as though begging for divine patience. Or for the Lord to strike his sister down. Callie couldn’t quite discern which.”

“But 'tis common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round, he then turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the vase defrees by which he did ascend.”

“[I]n any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.”

“The true snob never rests; there is always a higher goal to attain, and there are, by the same token, always more and more people to look down upon.”