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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will
find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a
misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the
happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing
is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet
perhaps as few know their own strength. It is, in men as in soils,
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