Commonplace Book

'...trying to bring lucidity into minds whose natural element was an amiable confusion, making himself hot, and exhausting his own spirit. Caroline saw Robert always with a slight frown, which came from his inability to make other people see. She loved him for trying - but what is the inability to make other people see, except one's own inability to accept other people as they are?'

from The Visit to Vallado, a chapter in Mist in the Tagus by Tom Hopkinson