Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other.
Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.
He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down. 
Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back. 
Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own. 
The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself. 
Reputation is but a synonym of popularity: dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters. 