Reserve is a great help to reputation. I know a shallow scientist who has gained a fine position mainly owing to his knack of leaving his hearers with the impression that he knows much more than he has told. * * * * * It is a noble trait to be above the temptations of fortune; but those who care least about money are not therefore the most honest. * * * * * Nothing is more interesting than self-revelation; nor more tedious than self-publication. * * * * * If you avoid disagreeable people, and cease thinking about them, for you they will have no existence. * * * * * Society is the jury impaneled to try the causes of which the law takes no cognizance. * * * * * The worst of an unfounded accusation is its foundation. * * * * * Never hit at a hornet unless you are sure of killing it. Never notice a social scandal about yourself unless you can refute it absolutely. A weak defense is more damaging than silence. * * * * * It is a much admired art to turn the weaknesses of others to our own profit. How sublime would be the science which would direct their strength to their own true interests! IV. _On Fellowship, Comradeship and Friendship._ Man is slow to understand how human he is. He thinks he can measure himself by other standards than himself, but all his circuits lead him home again; his most positive knowledge is of himself, and by analogy of his own kind. With a wise recognition of the limits of his own nature he should seek happiness in the conditions of existence known to him and especially among his own species, where alone he can find beings whose endowments are the same, and whose affinities and sympathies respond to his own. Society, as I have said, is the common field of intercourse in civilized life, and it makes for itself its own various limitations and restrictions. Other methods of Association are based on quite different principles, but have all been organized with the aim of increasing happiness, and all therefore deserve the cultivation of him who is sedulous about his own. The two motives which give them origin are, the one, Interest; the other, Sympathy. The former I may call Fellowships; the latter, Comradeships.