Georg Brandes

“It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to please than my mother.”

“The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster.”

“Being gifted needs courage.”

“Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me was unfortunately rare with me.”

“When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.”

“A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.”

“I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.”

“I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals.”

“I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.”

“Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior.”

“The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them.”

“I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.”

“But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both.”

“I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.”