Tak seorang pun dapat melampaui keterbatasannya yang sempit. Sifat dan pikiran tiap orang selalu mengatakan ”jika sekiranya…” Kedudukan memberikan kewenangan, tapi jarang dibersamai kebaikan pribadi, karena keberuntungan sering menghukum seseorang dalam kedudukan tinggi dengan memberi bakat yang kurang. Angan-angan selalu berjalan mendahului akal sehat sehingga segalanya tampak berlebihan. Imajinasi membayangkan apa yang ada dan yang mungkin ada. Kejernihan nalar hendaknya melihat segala sesuatu dengan jernih dan benar terhadap angan-angan. Orang bodoh tak punya keberanian dan orang pandai tak punya rasa takut. Rasa percaya diri membantu orang bodoh dan sederhana, terlebih lagi terhadap orang arif dan pemberani!
No one o'ersteps the narrow bounds of humanity : all have their weaknesses either in heart or head. Dignity gives apparent authority, which is rarely accompanied by personal power : for Fortune often redresses the height of office by the inferiority of the holder. The imagination always jumps too soon, and paints things in brighter colours than the real: it thinks things not as they
are but as it wishes them to be. Attentive experience disillusionised in the past soon corrects all that. Yet if wisdom should not be timorous, neither should folly be rash. And if self-reliance helps the ignorant, how much more the brave and wise? (A Grain of Boldness in Everything, clxxxii:109)
(The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 2003: 224)