Most of these reveal a psychological shrewdness about human fallibility: •A man of genius is but seldom ruined but by himself. •If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. •There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by. •All censure of self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. •Man’s chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature. •No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. •Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves. •Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage you think is particularly fine, strike it out. •Every man naturally persuades himself he can keep his resolutions; nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
David Brooks.