The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it. One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself. Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob? By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved. Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry. No one but the master can promote the cause of Art. Patrons help the master--that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that Art is helped. The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others. It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one. No one should desire to live in irregular circumstances; but if by chance a man falls into them, they test his character and show of how much determination he is capable. An honorable man with limited ideas often sees through the rascality of the most cunning jobber. Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him. The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always a burden to them. If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well. I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial. Word and picture are correlatives which are continually in quest of each other, as is sufficiently evident in the case of metaphors and similes. So from all time what was said or sung inwardly to the ear had to be presented equally to the eye. And so in childish days we see word and picture in continual balance; in the book of the law and in the way of salvation, in the Bible and in the spelling-book. When something was spoken which could not be pictured, and something pictured which could not be spoken, all went well; but mistakes were often made, and a word was used instead of a picture; and thence arose those monsters of symbolical mysticism, which are doubly an evil. The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with good-will; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master. People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it. Clever people are the best encyclopædia. There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing. A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live.