I Know That Even The Meanest Person

On An Exhausted Field, Only Weeds Grow.

I Know That Even The Meanest Person Has Still At His Disposition High-sounding Words Wherewith To Mask His Real Character.

Amid The Stillness Of The Night, In The Depths Of The Ravine, From The Direction In Which The Corpses Lay Suddenly Resounded A Kind Of Inhuman, Frightful Laughter In Which Quivered Despair, And Joy, And Cruelty, And Suffering, And Pain, And Sobbing, And Derision; The Heart-rending And Spasmodic Laughter Of The Insane Or Condemned.

I Know From Experience That To One Who Thinks Much And Feels Deeply, It Often Seems That He Has Only To Put Down His Thoughts And Feelings In Order To Produce Something Altogether Out Of The Common; Yet As Soon As He Sets To Work He Falls Into A Certain Mannerism Of Style And Common Phraseology; His Thoughts Do Not Come Spontaneously, And One Might Almost Say That It Is Not The Mind That Directs The Pen, But The Pen Leads The Mind Into Common, Empty Artificiality.

A Man Who Leaves Memoirs, Whether Well Or Badly Written, Provided They Be Sincere, Renders A Service To Future Psychologists And Writers, Giving Them Not Only A Faithful Picture, But Likewise Human Documents That May Be Relied Upon.