He had incurred the ridicule of having to have his explanation explained.

He was Lambert Strether because he was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether.

He would have done anything for Mrs.Newsome, have been still more ridiculous--as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.
He judged the quantity as small because it WAS small, and all the more egregiously since it couldn't, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably have been larger.

He hadn't had the gift of making the most of what he tried, and if he had tried and tried again--no one but himself knew how often--it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in default of that, COULD be made.

Old ghosts of experiments came back to him, old drudgeries and delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with their relapses, old fevers with their chills, broken moments of good faith, others of still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of the sort qualified as lessons.