COMPLY with some humors, bear with others, but serve none. Civil complacency consists with decent honesty:
Flattery is a Juggler, and no Kin unto Sincerity. But while thou maintainest the plain path, and scornest to flatter others, fall not into self Adulation, and become not thine own Parasite. Be deaf unto thy self, & be not betrayed at home. Self-credulity, pride, and levity lead unto self-Idolatry.
There is no Damocles like unto self opinion, nor any Siren to our own fawning Conceptions. To magnify our minor things, or hug our selves in our apparitions; to afford a credulous Ear unto the clawing suggestions of fancy; to pass other days in painted mistakes of our selves; and though we behold our own blood, to think our selves the Sons of Jupiter; are blandishments of self love, worse than outward delusion. By this Imposture Wise Men sometimes are Mistaken in their Elevation, and look above themselves. And Fools, which are Antipodes unto the Wise, conceive them selves to be but their Perioeci, and in the same parallel with them. As Alexander the Great did. As Alexander the Great did.
