good pure-tissued demons:

‘Though one knows all the time one’s life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the humiliation. I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn’t live properly—can’t. It’s the failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.’
‘But do you fail to live?’ he asked, almost jeering.
‘Why yes—I don’t make much of a success of my days. One seems always to be bumping one’s nose against the blank wall ahead.’

‘Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won’t fall off the tree when they’re ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.’