Lacking Natural Simplicity

I was reading Patrick O'Brian's The Commodore (W.W. Norton & Co, Inc, New York, 1995) and was struck by these two quotes:

“Sickness has innumerable squalors, many of which you know far too well, my dear,” he said when Jack and he were sitting together in the great cabin, “and among them, in some ways the nastiest, is the sufferer's total selfishness. Admittedly, a body doing all it can to survive will naturally turn in upon itself; but the mind inhabiting that body is so inclined to feast on the indulgence, carrying on and on long after the necessity is gone.” — Stephen, on p. 231

“... there is no heart to change: no person left: only a set of pompous attitutes.” — Jack, on p. 234