The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them; secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us down to a single flat surface.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

Article (1859-02), “The Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” Atlantic Monthly
    (Source)

Collected in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, ch. 2 (1859).