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 value that he exaggerates the importance of everything that
concerns him.

This condition is a much more common one than one might at first
believe. Many an occurrence which, when it happens to some one else,
seems to us quite devoid of interest, becomes, when it directly affects
us, a matter to compel the attention of others, to the extent that we
find ourselves chilled and disappointed when we discover that we are the
victims of that indifference which we were prepared to exhibit toward
other people under similar circumstances.

The consciousness of our own worth must not be confounded with that
adoration of self which transforms poise into egotism.