Reasoning-power is the trade-mark of superior minds.  Mediocre natures take no interest in it and, as we have seen, the timid are incapable of it, except in so far as it follows the beaten path.

True poise never is guided by anything but reason.  Certain risks can never be undertaken save after ripe deliberation.

Confusion is never the fate of those who are resolved on a definite line of conduct.

Such people are careful to plumb the questions with which they have to grapple and to weigh the inconveniences and the advantages of the acts they have the desire to accomplish.

When their decision is once made, however, nothing will prevent the completion of the work they have begun.  Such people are ripe for success.

The knowledge of one’s real worth is a quality doubly precious when contrasted with the fact that the majority of people are more than indulgent to their own failings.  Of many of them it may be said, in the words of the Arab proverb, couched in the language of imagery:  “This man has no money, but in his pocket everything turns to gold.”

This saying, divested of the language of hyperbole, means simply that the man in question is so obsessed with the greatness of his own personal value that he exaggerates the importance of everything that concerns him.

This condition is a much more common one than one might at first believe.  Many an occurrence which, when it happens to some one else, seems to us quite devoid of interest, becomes, when it directly affects us, a matter to compel the attention of others, to the extent that we find ourselves chilled and disappointed when we discover that we are the victims of that indifference which we were prepared to exhibit toward other people under similar circumstances.

The consciousness of our own worth must not be confounded with that adoration of self which transforms poise into egotism.

It is a good thing to know one’s own powers sufficiently well to undertake only such tasks as are certainly within the scope of one’s abilities.

To believe oneself more capable than one really is, is a fault that is far too common.  It is, nevertheless, less harmful in the long run than the failing which is its exact antithesis.  Lack of confidence in one’s own powers is the source of every kind of feebleness and of all unsuccess.

It is for this reason that poise never can exist without another quality, that correctness of judgment which, in giving us the breadth of mind to know exactly how much we are capable of, permits us to undertake our tasks without boasting and without hesitation.

Soundness of judgment is the faculty of being able to appreciate the merits of our neighbors without cherishing any illusions as to our own, and of being able to do this so exactly that we can with assurance carry out to its end any undertaking, knowing that the result must be, barring accidents, precisely what we have foreseen.