It was impossible for him to calmly watch his child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.
That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him than his sense of paternal obligation.

Lear apparently also ignored the common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal inheritance of magnanimity.

He had thought of himself so long as a noble and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might perceive himself in the wrong.

Even in the midst of the storm he declared himself more sinned against than sinning.

He could believe any amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no fidelity on the part of Cordelia unless she gave him the sign he demanded.
At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around him, and he came to a larger conception of life.