Some men need a jab with a knife to start their pride; some require a friend's strong helping arm around them.

You need the jab.

I'm trying to administer it without anaesthetics, by telling you what some men think of you--that it is your monstrous selfishness that has distorted your normal common sense and landed you where you are.
"Selfishness alone has resulted in a most cruel and unnatural neglect of your sister--your only living relative--in a deliberate relapse into slothful and vicious habits; in neglect of a most promising career which was already yours; in a contemptible willingness to live on your sister's income after gambling away your own fortune.
"I know you; I carried you through teething and measles, my son: and I've carried you through the horrors of alcoholic delirium.

And I say to you now that, with the mental degeneration already apparent, and your naturally quick temper, if you break down a few more cells in that martyred brain of yours, you'll end in an asylum--possibly one reserved for the _criminal_ insane." A dull colour stained the pasty whiteness of Quest's face.

For several minutes he stood there, his fingers working and picking at each other, his pale, prominent eyes glaring.
"That's a big indictment, doctor," he said at last.
"Thank God you think it so," returned the doctor.