“The desire to impress is an efficient means of bringing out one’s least impressive qualities.”

wild and implacable, and what power of abuse! Strange don't you think that Ernst Jünger should comment at length in his war-diaries how irresistibly Bloy reminded him of Hitler in his paroxysms of rage and his foul and ribald tongue?..Yet Bloy was undoubtedly a man with great gifts of vision and perception, and charity, too - even in the midst of his orgies of hatred. And much of what he writes about Our Lady of La Salette in his La Salette book is very fine and often goes straight to one's heart...
Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), p. 12

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 5 (p. 149)

The Paris Review interview

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Quoted in Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court (1979), p. viii.

You cannot fake being positive, but you can practise and teach yourself to appear and act in a positive manner.
Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.18