Conceit without obstinacy may be overcome by the advice of judicious counselors; united with obstinacy it carries its possessor beyond the bounds of prudence, almost beyond the control of reason.

Obstinacy united with good judgment is softened into the virtue of firmness.

It has often been said that self-made men, as they are termed, are necessarily conceited.

Like all aphorisms, this must be taken with numberless exceptions, but it was singularly applicable to Johnson, who was in all respects a self-made man.

His great career was never absent from his thoughts, and he was always looking at himself as he fancied he would appear in history.