Simplicity of character

Internet technology is amazing these day eh? Never in the history of mankind was so much valuable information at the fingertips of so many! My orkut daily fortune popped up this message "Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought" naturally I was intrigued. I Googled that entire sentence and found this was part of an essay called Characteristics by William Hazlitt

Apart from the gem above, I found more gems as under from this essay :-) What luck! I already feel like a school kid accidentally finding precious stones on the river bed one after another after another...

1. What makes it so difficult to do justice to others is that we are hardly sensible of merit, unless it falls in with our own views and line of pursuit, and where this is the case, it interferes with our pretensions.
2. To be forward to praise others, implies either
   

• Great eminence, that can afford to part with applause
• Great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments
• Great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.

1. The greatest talents do not generally attain to the highest stations
2. For though high, the ascent to them is narrow, beaten, and crooked
3. The path of genius is free, and its own
4. Success in business is therefore seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power, which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of common-place capacity.