What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations, against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and generally a demanding of more from life than life can yield. _We_ note very well the folly of one addicted to this, saying: _He expects better bread than can be made of wheat_; and the Portuguese: _He that will have an horse without fault, let him go afoot_; and the French: _Where the goat is tied, there she must browse_.[123] Again, what a good word of caution in respect of the wisdom of considering oftentimes a step which, being once taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following Russian proverb: _Measure thy cloth ten times; thou canst cut it but once_. And in this Spanish the final issues of procrastination are well set forth: _By the street of “By-and-bye” one arrives at the house of “Never.”_[124] In how pleasant a way discretion in avoiding all appearance of evil is urged in the following Chinese: _In a field of melons tie not thy shoe; under a plum-tree adjust not thy cap_. And this Danish warns us well against relying too much on other men’s silence, since there is no rarer gift than the capacity of keeping a secret: _Tell nothing to thy friend which thine enemy may not know_. Here is a word which we owe to Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out of law-suits, or, being in them, from refusing to accept tolerable terms of accommodation: _The robes of lawyers are lined with the obstinacy of suitors_.[125] Other words of wisdom and warning, for so I must esteem them, are these; this, on the danger of being overset by prosperity: _Everything may be borne, except good fortune_;[126] with which may be compared our own: _Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself_; and another Italian which says: _In prosperity no altars smoke_.[127] This is on the disgrace which will sooner or later follow upon dressing ourselves out in intellectual finery that does not belong to us: _Who arrays himself in other men’s garments, is stripped in the middle of the street_;[128] he is detected and laid bare when and where detection is most shameful.