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 c