In reasoning with your dependants, do not allow yourself to make broad assertions and careless conclusions, merely because you are addressing inferiors. “The Courts of Reason recognise no difference of persons.” And when you wish to disabuse the minds of those entrusted to your guidance of any thing which you are convinced is erroneous, do not attempt to do so by unmeasured condemnation. It is seldom that a secure answer is given to any theory, or system, except by one who exhausts, and lays before you, the good in it.
Let not your forgiveness be of that kind which may almost be set down as forgetfulness.
You must not always expect to hear a good explanation of a man’s reason for his conduct. In the first place, he does not carry such things about with him in a producible shape; some of them he has probably forgotten, although their influence may still remain strongly upon his mind; and such as he does give, are likely to be those which he thinks will have most weight with the person to whom he is speaking.
In giving way to selfish persons, remember that you cannot sacrifice yourself alone. Any relation in which you may be placed to them, especially if you are the superior, is not a thing that concerns you only; but is, as it were, a trust for society in general.
It is hard to judge about quarrels, for the points on which they openly break out have often no more to do with the real grounds of difference than the place of a battle with the
cause of the war. Many a quarrel, after running for a long time under ground, gushes forth with a vehemence which seems unaccountable; and it is difficult to divine what lands it has passed through in its hidden course. Any particular outbreak cannot safely be taken as an index of the general conduct of the parties towards each other.
Playfulness is a good means of softening social distances. A stiff, grave, man is always in danger of being feared too much. On the other hand, as the self-love of many people is suspicious in the extreme, you must expect that your most innocent playfulness will often be mistaken for ridicule.
It is a duty not to allow yourself to think of any living man, still less to treat him, as if your hopes of his amendment were utterly dead and gone.
You must not be much surprised at the ingratitude of those to whom you have given nothing but money.
Once give your mind to suspicion, and there will be sure to be food enough for it. In the stillest night, the air is filled with sounds for the wakeful ear that is resolved to listen.