‘You little Fool!’ returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull she gave her arm. ‘Have you no spirit at all? But that’s just the way! You have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride, just as you allow yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a thing,’ with the scornfullest emphasis, ‘you would let your family be trodden on, and never turn.’

The celebrated Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example, in the 20th century will describe, almost hauntingly, his mid-life experience of falling into himself.

This cake is reserved for the guests!

[…] I don’t pretend to justify the extravagations of the multitude; who, I suppose, were as wild in their former censure, as in their present praise […]