Often the desire to appear competent impedes our ability to become competent, because we more anxious to display our knowledge than to learn what we do not know.

Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.

It is an admirable skill to able to sweeten a refusal with civil words which atone for the favor which we are not able to grant.

It is a very common failing, never to be pleased with our fortune nor displeased with our character.

It is neither a great praise nor a great blame when people say a tendency is in or out of fashion. If a tendency is as it should be at one time, it is always as it should be.

This imperiousness which aids us in all things is merely a fitting authority which comes from superior spirit.

Everyone is so caught up in his own passions and interests that he always wants to talk about them without getting involved in the passions and interests of those to whom he speaks, although his listeners have the same need for others to listen to and help them.