To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

Fortune mends more faults in us than ever reason would be able to do.

We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.

Were we faultless, we would not derive such satisfaction from remarking the faults of others.

The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

We frequently are troublesome to others, when we think it impossible for us ever to be so.