There are, as is well-known, many ways of looking at things.

Every thing has several sides and, in accordance with the angle at which we examine it, seems to us more or less favorable.

The superficial man only sees things, and only wants to see them, from the viewpoint of his own desires.

To the morose man all their contours appear distorted.

The optimist, on the contrary, carefully changes their outlines.

Only to the man who makes a practise of rational thinking comes a true vision of both the good and the bad that exist in everything.

This science of reasoning is the base of all deductive processes, that, in strengthening the judgment, aid in the formation of poise.

Without reason the scaffolding of the most splendid resolves falls to the ground.

Without reason we wander aimlessly in bypaths instead of following the broad highway.

Without reason, in short, we become guilty of injustice, not only toward others, but still more toward ourselves, since we can not form a correct estimate of our own characters.

It is reason which enables us to choose the happy mean that leaves the country of fear to reach the goal of reserve, and follows it to the extreme limit of poise without ever encroaching upon the territory of effrontery.

It is poise alone that enables us to communicate to others the qualities which we possess.

This has ever been the gift of men of genius, of those who could enforce their doctrines and impose them upon others by the sheer strength of their attitude and the way in which they analyzed and reasoned out all their principles.

What conviction can he hope to carry to his hearers who is not himself persuaded of the truth of the theories he is presenting?

This is the condition of those timid people who give their advice in the same tone they would use to ask it.

For this reason they never become expert.  They rarely ever taste of success and usually sink into a state of discontent and envy.

This last fault is nearly always indulged in by the timid, whom it soothes, not simply because of its maliciousness, but because envy seems to them to condone their own inertia by giving them an excuse for their lack of action.

For people of mediocre mentality to deny the intelligence of others is to bring them down into their own plane and saves them the effort of climbing to that of their superiors.

And since lack of sincerity toward themselves is always one of the faults of those who are wanting in poise, they can not help feeling a sentiment of jealousy toward those who have succeeded where they themselves have failed.

Instead of doing justice without bitterness to the superiority of others by a determination to imitate it, they take the simpler course of envying the good fortune of their neighbors and attribute it all to luck.