Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard of rectitude, and be more indebted to the severity of your own judgment of yourself than to all external percepts. Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority.

Many would be wise if they did not think themselves wise.

Truth is for the minority.

Know how to keep anticipation alive: always strive to feed it, by letting the much promise more, and the one achievement be the announcement only of a greater. Put not all your reserves into the first throw; the great trick is to dole out strength, and to dole out mind, in such a fashion as to bring forward increasingly the fulfillment of what was expected of you.

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

There is no wilderness like a life without friends.

Every fool stands convinced; and everyone convinced is a fool. The faultier a person's judgement the firmer their convictions.