Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad

He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. But far
from being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript
dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery
to a point where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own
nature. To be suddenly selected for the executive member of the
patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to him the height of
the unexpected, one of those fantastic moves of which only his "dear
countrymen" were capable.