ete and
imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of
proportion to their actions and achievements.

18

The most insignificant man can be complete if he works within the limits
of his capacities, innate or acquired; but even fine talents can be
obscured, neutralised, and destroyed by lack of this indispensable
requirement of symmetry. This is a mischief which will often occur in
modern times; for who will be able to come up to the claims of an age so
full and intense as this, and one too that moves so rapidly?

19

It is only men of practical ability, knowing their powers and using them
with moderation and prudence, who will be successful in worldly affairs.

20

It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less
than one is worth.

21

From time to time I meet with a youth in whom I can wish for no
alteration or improvement, only I am sorry to see how often his nature
makes him quite ready to swim with the stream of the time; and it is on
this that I would always insist, that man in his fragile boat has the
rudder placed in his hand, just that he may not be at the mercy of the
waves, but follow the direction of his own insight.

22

But how is a young man to come of himself to see blame in things which
every one is busy with, which every one approves and promotes? Why
should he not follow his natural bent and go in the same direction as
they?

23

I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which lets nothing
come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by the next, and the day
spent in the day; so that a man is always living from hand to mouth,
without having anything to show for it. Have we not already newspapers
for every hour of the day! A good head could assuredly intercalate one
or other of them. They publish abroad everything that every one does, or
is busy with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged
into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime for
others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to city, from
kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere to the other,--all
in post haste.

24

As little as you can stifle a steam-engine, so little can you do this in
the moral sphere either. The activity of commerce, the rush and rustle
of paper-money, the swelling-up of debts to pay debts--all these are
the monstrous elements to which in these days a young man is exposed.
Well is it for him