From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do.

He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded.

I was not at all aware that my attainments were anything unusual at my age.

If I accidentally had my attention drawn to the fact that some other boy knew less than myself--which happened less often than might be imagined--I concluded, not that I knew much, but that he, for some reason or other, knew little, or that his knowledge was of a different kind from mine.

My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance.