Charles M. Doughty

“In the ferment of our civil societies, from which the guardian angels seem to depart, we see many every moment sliding at the brink. What anguishes are rankling in the lees of the soul, the heart-nipping unkindness of a man's friends, his defeated endeavours ! betwixt the birth and death of the mind, what swallowing seas, and storms of mortal miseries ! And when the wildfire is in the heart and he is made mad, the incontinent hands would wreak the harm upon his own head, to blot out the abhorred illusion of the world and the desolate remembrance of himself. Succoured in the forsaken hour, when his courage swerved, with the perfume of human kindness, he might have been to-day alive. Many have looked for consolation, in the imbecility of their souls, who found perhaps hardness of face and contra-diction ; they perished untimely in default of our humanity.”
― Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Volume 1