If you would not be known to do any thing, never do it.
A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but
every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a
solitary eater, but he cannot keep his foolish counsel.
A broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts
and the want of due knowledge,--all blab. Can a cook, a
Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for Zeno or Paul?
Confucius exclaimed,--"How can a man be concealed? How
can a man be concealed?"

On the other hand, the hero fears not that if he
withhold the avowal of a just and brave act it will
go unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself,
--and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to
nobleness of aim which will prove in the end a better
proclamation of it than the relating of the incident.
Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of
things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent.
It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for
seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described
as saying, I AM.

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and
not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated
nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let
us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in
the Lord's power and learn that truth alone makes rich
and great.