Cicero observed to a degenerate patrician, "I am the first of my family, but you are the last of yours" And since his time, those who value themselve… - Charles Caleb Colton

Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.