But any man of moral experience will know that there is no pride so wholesome as the pride in something that does him no credit. That is why love is the parent of the highest pride, because it is pride in a happiness which cannot be anything but undeserved. Similarly it cannot fail to be elevating to a man to boast of great battles that he never saw, and to plume himself with a certain agreeable vanity upon splendid actions that he did not perform. In this kind of exaltation a man is proud at the same moment that he is humble. He feels the profound philosophic truth that his own greatest merits are as much dependent upon nature as the merits of his remotest ancestors. to him his own most dazzling impromptu is as much a gift as the grass in the meadow. He will not therefore resent being called upon to exult in the wonders of other ages or the deeds of other men. No one can have failed to notice that the only kind of conceit which is really vulgar and pitiful is the conceit of the man who has himself something of which to be conceited.

-July 10, 1901, Daily News