Strickland was distinguished from most Englishmen by his perfect indifference to comfort; it did not irk him to live always in one shabby room; he had no need to be surrounded by beautiful things. He did not want arm-chairs to sit in; he really felt more at his ease on a kitchen-chair. He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to what he ate; to him it was only food that he devoured to still the pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed capable of doing without. He was a sensual man, and yet was indifferent to sensual things. He looked upon privation as no hardship. There was something impressive in the manner in which he lived a life wholly of the spirit. (89).
He never said a clever thing, but he had a vein of brutal sarcasm which was not ineffective, and he always said exactly what he thought. He was indifferent to the susceptibilities of others, and when he wounded them was amused. (95) He employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. (97).
He received all enquiries about his feelings or his needs with a jibe, a sneer, or an oath. (106) There was something monumental in his ungainliness. It seemed as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual. There was in him something primitive. He seemed to partake of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in shapes part human and part beast, the satyr and the faun. He seemed to bear in his heart strange harmonies and unadventured patterns and I foresaw for him an end of torture and despair. He was possessed of a devil, but you could not say that it was a devil of evil, for it was a primitive force that existed before good and ill. (109) A man so entirely indifferent to his surroundings. (110).
That was in his character. He was a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tiger because he is fierce and cruel.