Watch a man in times of… adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off. – Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter