How can we learn to know ourselves? By reflection, never, but by our actions. Attempt to do your duty, and you will immediately find what is in you. _Goethe._ 262. Man is supreme lord and master Of his own ruin and disaster, Controls his fate, but nothing less In ordering his own happiness: For all his care and providence Is too feeble a defence To render it secure and certain Against the injuries of Fortune; And oft, in spite of all his wit, Is lost by one unlucky hit, And ruined with a circumstance, And mere punctilio of a chance. _Butler._ 263. There is nothing in this world which a resolute man, who exerts himself, cannot attain. _Somadeva._ 264. Ere need be shown, some men will act, As trees may fruit without a flower; To some you speak with no result, As seeds may die, and yield no grain. _Hindu Poetess._ 265. Seven things characterise the wise man, and seven the blockhead. The wise man speaks not before those who are his superiors, either in age or wisdom. He interrupts not others in the midst of their discourse. He replies not hastily. His questions are relevant to the subject, his answers, to the purpose. In delivering his sentiments he taketh the first in order first, the last, last. What he understands not he says, “I understand not.” He acknowledges his error, and is open to conviction. The reverse of all this characterises the blockhead. _Talmud._ 266. How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of the night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible. From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half sound, a half whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of the earth and all created things in the great miracle of nature—decay and reproduction—ever beginning, never ending—the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. _Longfellow._ 267. What avails your wealth, if it makes you arrogant to the poor? _Arabic._ 268. All confidence is dangerous unless it is complete; there are few circumstances in which it is not better either to hide all or to tell all. _La Bruyère._ 269. It is well that there is no one without a fault, for he would not have a friend in the world: he would seem to belong to a different species. _Hazlitt._ 270.