“(Shoddiness is) the nature of human life. It takes an exertion to be indifferent to these things, but it's an exertion worth making. Also, it allows you luxuries like scorn and flippancy.”

“Make no mistake: it's not that I actively dislike you. That would take an effort on my part that I have absolutely no interest in exerting on behalf of such an insignificant little man such as yourself. No, I am indifferent towards you with absolutely no hope for an upgrade.”

“The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you”

“But that age … exerts on usAn almost terrible charm,Like the memory of things seenAnd a life lived in dreams.”

“How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?”

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ”