[O]ur ugly little species, weak and ugly, torn with insanities, violent and quarrelsome, sensing evil – the only species that knows evil and practices it – the only one that senses cleanness and is dirty, that knows about cruelty and is unbearably cruel…

Our dear race, born without courage but very brave, born with a flickering intelligence and yet with beauty in its hands. What animal has made beauty, created it, save only we? With all our horrors and our faults, somewhere in us there is a shining. That is the most important fact of all facts. There is a shining.