I would not be understood to imply that he had an unusual amount of pride; and I am sure he was less easily satisfied with himself than most are.

Most people will make excuses for themselves which they would neither make nor accept for their neighbor; their own failures and follies trouble them little: Faber was of another sort.

As ready as any other man to discover what could be said on his side, he was not so ready to adopt it.

He required a good deal of himself.

But then he unconsciously compared himself with his acquaintances, and made what he knew of them the gauge, if not the measure, of what he required of himself.
It were unintelligible how a man should prefer being the slave of blind helpless Law to being the child of living Wisdom, should believe in the absolute Nothing rather than in the perfect Will, were it not that he does not, can not see the Wisdom or the Will, except he draw nigh thereto.
I shall be answered: "We do not prefer.