I went to the bookstore today and happened across A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster, so I picked it up. There is a wonderfully humane paragraph in the first chapter.
In the opening scene, an older woman and a younger woman from England are on a trip to Italy. They are staying at a pension, with other travelers & vacationers, also from England, not all of whom are of the same social class. The pension guests are gathered in a dining room or lobby of sorts. A conversation occurs between the two women and two men--a father and son--who happen to be in proximity to the women. The older man's bluntness and apparent clumsiness in conversation reveals that the two men aren't members of the social class to which the women belong. This is followed by a rapid conversation among all the pension guests in which everyone shows fluency and facility with the interpersonal style and conversational conventions of the women's class, creating the feeling of exclusion regarding the two men. Then, this (emphasis mine):
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned moodily to his plate. Obviously, he and his father did not do. Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave her no extra pleasure that anyone should be left in the cold; when she rose to go she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous little bow.
E.M. Forster seems to have been a completely lovely human being. In this interview, he says, "And anyone who's cared to read my books will see what a high value I attach to personal relationships. And to tolerance ... But if I have had any influence, I should be very glad that it had induced people to enjoy this wonderful world into which we're born and of course to help others to enjoy it, too."
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