"The true and horrid secret of the crank is this: that he is not interested in his subject. He is only interested in his object."

The true and horrid secret of the crank is this: that he is not interested in his subject. He is only interested in his object. He wants to do something, to alter something, to feel he has made a difference, to rediscover his own miserable existence. He does not care for women, but for Votes for Women; he does not care for children, but for education; he does not care for animals, but for Anti-vivisection; he does not care for Nature, but for "open spaces." He does not care for anything unless he can do something to it. Leave him for three minutes alone with a cow or a canary, and he has not enough energy to live the life of contemplation. He can never enjoy a discussion because he can never enjoy a doubt. He is unfit for all the arts and sciences and philosophies, which require a powerful patience or a noble indifference. He is unfit to be an agnostic. He is unfit to be an angler. I am not sure he might not shoot someone, out of sheer ennui, if he were a sentry. Milton had in him, in so far as so great a man could have, a slight streak of the crank. And it was this that he rebuked in himself and in all his brother cranks in that phrase, that "They also serve who only stand and wait." That is another trade from which the real and genuine crank is cut off. He can never really be a Waiter.

-July 19, 1913, Illustrated London News