“225. In blaming myself, as often I have done, and may have occasion to do again, for my want of affection to other people, I must also express continually, as I think back about it, more and more wonder that ever anybody had any affection for me. I thought they might as well have got fond of a camera-lucida or an ivory foot-rule: all my faculty was merely in showing that such and such things were so; I was no orator, no actor, no painter but in a minute and generally invisible manner and I couldn’t bear being interrupted in anything I was about.

Nevertheless, some sensible grown-up people did get to like me! – the best of them with a protective feeling that I wanted guidance no less than sympathy; and the higher religious souls, hoping to lead me to the golden gates.”

(John Ruskin, Præterita, Volume II, Chapter XII, p. 405 in the Everyman’s edition.)