It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.

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.

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

It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

It is better that great peoples should seek out glory, or even vanity, in their deeds, than that they should remain indifferent . For even if they are not incited to act upon virtuous principles, at least there is the saving grace that they will do things they might not have done had not vanity prompted their actions.

The conversation of those who like to lord it over us is very disagreeable. But we should always be ready to graciously acknowledge the truth, no matter in what guise it comes to us.