If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

Friends show me what I can do, foes teach me what I should do.

A pity about the people! they are brave enough comrades, but they have heads like a soapboiler's.

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

I am better than my reputation

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.

The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.