They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive.

The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible.

They are born, it would seem, with more than the common allowance of kibes for treading on: a severe misfortune for them.

Now for their merits: they have poetry in them; they are valiant; they are hospitable to teach the Arab a lesson: I do believe their life is their friend's at need--seriously, they would lay it down for him: or the wherewithal, their money, their property, excepting the three-stringed harp of three generations back, worth now in current value sixpence halfpenny as a curiosity, or three farthings for firewood; that they'll keep against their own desire to heap on you everything they have--if they love you, and you at the same time have struck their imaginations.
Offend them, however, and it's war, declared or covert.

And I must admit that their best friend can too easily offend them.