凡事都要勇敢，这是审慎处世的一个要点。你必须节制自己对他人的评价，以免高估他们，让自己畏惧。想象力不可无限扩大。很多人看似伟大，若与其相交，只会增加你的失望，而非景仰。无人能超越人性的局限，尽管它很小——每个人都有弱点，不是存在于大脑，就是存在于内心。尊贵的地位使人表面威严，但这权威很少与人自身的能力相配——命运无常，它总是让地位高贵的人拥有低劣的素质，以平衡其位置的高度。想象总是蹦出太快，给事物染上比本身更绚丽的色彩——想象力不是根据事物的本质来考虑问题的，是根据人的期望。历练的警觉可立即矫正这一点。智者不应懦弱退避，愚人不应粗鲁莽撞。如果说自信能为无知者助威，那它对智勇双全者的帮助又何其大矣！
a grain of boldness in everything. it is an important piece of prudence. you must moderate your opinion of others so that you may not think so high of them as to fear them. the imagination should never yield to the heart. many appear great till you know them personally, and then dealing with them does more to disillusionize than to raise esteem. no one oversteps the narrow bounds of humanity: all have their weaknesses either in heart or head. dignity gives apparent authority, which is rarely accompanied by personal power, for fortune often redresses the height of office by the inferiority of the holder. the imagination always jumps too soon, and paints things in brighter colours than the real: it thinks things not as they are but as it wishes them to be. attentive experience disillusionized in the past soon corrects all that. yet if wisdom should not be timorous, neither should folly be rash. and if self-reliance helps the ignorant, how much more the brave and wise?
