The uttered part of a man’s life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

Almost all of a person stays unsaid, including the parts they have not noticed in themselves. What gets expressed in a life, the opinions and the account they give of why they did things, is a thin surface over something much larger they will never fully see. If they cannot see it, the rest of us are working from very little indeed.

Hold your conclusions about people loosely on that basis. When somebody behaves in a way you cannot account for, assume there is a reason you do not have access to rather than reaching for a verdict. And be similarly careful with the tidy explanations you give for your own behaviour.