You are a man who believes in all that is good and beautiful in theory, but by too much indifference to good in small measures--for you want a thing perfect, or you want it not at all---you have abstracted yourself from perceiving it anywhere, except in the most brilliant examples of heroism that history affords.

You set up in your imagination an ideal which you call the good man, and you are utterly dissatisfied with anything less perfect than perfection.

The result is that, though you might do a good action from your philosophical longing to approach the ideal in your own person, you will not suffer yourself to believe that others are consciously or unconsciously striving to make themselves better also.
And you do not believe that any one can be made a better man by any one else, by any exterior agency, by any good that you or others may do to him.

What makes you what you are is the fact that you really cherish this beautiful ideal image of your worship and reverence, and love it; but for this, you would be the most insufferable man of my acquaintance, instead of being the most agreeable." Isaacs was gifted with a marvellous frankness of speech.

He always said what he meant, with a supreme indifference to consequences; but he said it with such perfect honesty and evident appreciation of what was good, even when he most vehemently condemned what he did not like, that it was impossible to be annoyed.