" You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know what--to no end of people. I am just a man. Here I stand before you. A man with a
mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his life would think on matters on which you would think first with or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a
man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back
to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of
violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing. No doubt you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day--a sort of hero--a political saint. But I beg to be excused. I am content in fitting myself to be a worker. And what can you people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow? On this Immensity. On this unhappy Immensity! I tell you," he cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step nearer the bed, "that what it needs is not a lot of haunting phantoms that I could walk through--but a man! "

― Joseph Conrad