It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity."

A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.