S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Self-Conceit
Should the world applaud, we must thankfully receive it as a boon; for if the most deserving of us appear to expect it as a debt, it will never be paid. The world, it has been said, does as much justice to our merits as to our defects, and I believe it; but, after all, none of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried.
Wouldst thou not be thought a fool in another’s conceit, be not wise in thy own: he that trusts to his own wisdom proclaims his own folly: he is truly wise, and shall appear so, that hath folly enough to be thought not worldly wise, or wisdom enough to see his own folly.
