impulses that will prove
profitable from a chaos of useless risks.

It is always by virtue of deductions depending upon reason that we are
able to adopt a resolution or to maintain an attitude that we believe to
be correct, while preserving our self-possession under circumstances in
which persons of a timorous disposition would certainly lose their
heads.

Those who know how to reason never expose themselves to the possibility
of being unhorsed by fate for lack of good reasons for strengthening
themselves in their chosen course.

They adhere, in the very heat of discussion and in spite of the
onslaughts of destiny, to the line of conduct that sage reflection has
taught them to adopt and are more than careful never to abandon it
except for the most valid reasons.

They never stray into the byways in which the timid and the shrinking
constantly wander without sufficient thought of the goal toward which
they are journeying.

They know where they are going, and if, now and again, they ask for
information about the road that remains to be traveled, it is with no
intention of changing their course, but simply so as not to miss the
short cuts and to lose nothing of the pleasures of the scenes through
which they may pass.

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 valu