Nick Wiggill

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.”
― Dean Koontz, Velocity

“8 April 1891
The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.

This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!”
― Jean Lorrain, Monsieur de Phocas

“The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.”
― Immanuel Kant

“I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett