Counsel

If everybody minded their own business, the world would go round a deal faster than it does.

— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, preface

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

— Confucius, translated by James Legge, Analects, XVII.2