Finally, when nearly everybody had attempted to extract from him the reason for his refusal to countenance this proposal, he would make an impatient side movement of his head, unfold his arms, bend over the papers on the table before him, and grunt out, sometimes with a boyish smile of relief, "Oh, all right, have it your own way." He lacked almost every grace of the spirit.

There was nothing amiable in his character.

Very few men liked him a great deal, and none I should say loved him.

I do not think he was brutal by nature, although his nature was not refined; but he cultivated a brutal manner.

He had the happiness of three or four friendships with cultivated and good women, but the beautiful creature whom he loved hungrily and doggedly, and to whom he proposed several times, could never bring herself to marry him.
I think there was no holy of holies in his character, no sanctuaries for the finer intimacies of human life.