Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny. – Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. – James Russell Lowell

The inward light is forever striving to gather enough additional light to penetrate the fog of our senses. – Henry Stanley Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street, 1940, originally published an