If these town gods can't detect the thieves who steal from their own temples, it's hardly likely they'll tell me who stole my spade.
It is foolish to try to imitate the skills of others.
Please all, and you will please none.
Appearances often are deceiving.
Others may try to feed our ego, but it is up to us to constrain it.
Pray do not grieve so; but go and take a stone, and place it in the hole, and fancy that the gold is still lying there. It will do you quite the same service; for when the gold was there, you had it not, as you did not make the slightest use of it.