Benedetto Croce

We must be severe, not only with ourselves, but with others also; exigent, not only with ourselves, but with others also; and so, on the contrary, benevolent not only towards others, but also toward ourselves; compassionate, not only toward others, but also towards this instrument of labour that we carry about with us and of which we sometimes demand too much; that is, our empirical individuality. Reality is neither democratic nor aristocratic, but both together; it abhors the privilege of some over others as much as that equality, according to which each one must have the same value as the other at every moment.

Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic, trans. Douglas Ainslie (1913, 1967), p. 429.