“There are indeed certain names and prefixes to names which suggest serious reading, independently of the words printed on the title-page of the book. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, or General Booth, or the Emperor William published a novel, for instance, the work might reasonably be expected to contain an exposition of personal views on some question of the day. But in ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.”

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

Washington Square (1881), ch. XIV.

Source: Voyager

Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 43)

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 5, “Ambivalence: The Children of the Ouemartsee” (p. 93)

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Of Carroll's essay Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing; p. 18
M. N. Cohen & E. Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators (2003)