VANITY is often the motive that forces a man to summon up all the energy of his soul. Wood added to a steel point makes a dart, two feathers added to the wood make an arrow. * * * * * A MAN of no principles is also, as a rule, a man of no character, for had he been born with character, he would have felt the need of forming principles. * * * * * NEARLY all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians--lack of power to pronounce the syllable, No. To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only two means to preserve one’s freedom and one’s character. * * * * * WHAT I have learnt I no longer know; what I still know has come to me by intuition. * * * * * MAN can aspire to virtue; he cannot reasonably aim at finding truth. * * * * * MAN reaches each stage in his life as a novice. * * * * * THE majority of human beings in the world pass their lives in it so heedlessly and think so little, that they do not know that world which they have before their eyes every day. They do not, M. de B. wittily remarked, for the same reason that cockchafers have no acquaintance with natural history. * * * * * ’TIS not generally known how much wit a man requires to avoid being ridiculous. * * * * * “ARE you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you can?” said Seneca to one of his sons who could not work out the exordium of an oration he was composing. One might say the same to those who adopt principles stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?” * * * * * IN great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small actions as they are. * * * * * VAIN is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is. * * * * * HE is far advanced in the study of morals who can lay his finger on all the points that distinguish pride from vanity. The first is lofty, calm, dignified, imperturbable, resolute; the second mean, inconstant, easily swayed, restless, unsteady. One raises a man, the other puffs him up. The first is source of a thousand virtues, the second that of nearly all vices and all caprices. There is a kind of pride in which are comprised all the commandments of God, a kind of vanity that embodies the seven deadly sins. * * * * * CELEBRITY: the advantage of being known to those who do not know you. * * * * *