Niels Lyhne by J.P. Jacobsen — Read

There was in Niels Lyhne's nature a lame reflectiveness, child of an instinctive shrinking from decisive action, grandchild of a subconscious sense that he lacked personality. He was always struggling against this reflectiveness, sometimes goading himself by calling it vile names, then again decking it out as a virtue that was a part of his inmost self and was bound up with all his possibilities and powers. But whatever he made of it, and however he looked upon it, he hated it as a secret infirmity, which he might perhaps hide from the world, but never from himself; it was always there to humiliate him whenever he was alone with himself. How he envied the audacity that rushes confidently into words, never heeding that words bring actions, and actions bring consequences -- until those consequences are at its heels. People who possessed it always seemed to him like centaurs -- man and horse cast in a single mould. With them impulse and leap were one, whereas he was divided into rider and horse -- impulse one thing, leap something very different.

Whenever he pictured himself declaring his love for Mrs. Boye -- and he always had to picture everything -- he could plainly see himself in the scene, his attitude, his every motion, his whole figure from the front, from the side, and from the back. He could see himself falter with the feverish irresolution that robbed him of his presence of mind and paralyzed him, while he stood there awaiting her answer as if it were a blow forcing him to his knees, instead of a shuttlecock to be thrown back in ever so many ways and returned in as many more.