"The scholar, having to encounter doubts and difficulties on all hands, [...] learns to take nothing for granted; least of all, to make an assumption of his own

"The scholar, having to encounter doubts and difficulties on all hands, [...] learns to take nothing for granted; least of all, to make an assumption of his own superior merits. [...] It takes years of patient toil and devoted enthusiasm to master any art or science; and after all, the success is doubtful. He infers that other triumphs must be prepared in like manner at an humble distance: he cannot conceive that any object worth seizing on or deserving of regard, can be carried by a coup de main. [...] It never once enters his head (till it is too late) that impudence is the current coin in the affairs of life; that he who doubts his own merit, never has credit given him by others; [...] that the world judge by appearances, not by realities; and that they sympathize more readily with those who are prompt to do themselves justice, and to show off their various qualifications or enforce their pretensions to the utmost. [...] He who has spent the best part of his time and wasted his best powers in endeavouring to answer the question -- 'What is truth?' -- scorns a lie, and every thing making the smallest approach to one. His mind by habit has become tenacious of, devoted to the truth." William Hazlitt, The Shyness of Scholars (1827)