Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.

Events are influenced by our very great desires.

Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.

I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique.