270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply — it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men can suffer — the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and “at home” in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which “YOU know nothing”! — this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the “initiated,” of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering.

Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.