The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener. [ Addison ]

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it. [ Mme. Roland ]

Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skillful men will not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to their hurt. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself: but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day. [ Goethe ]

A phlegmatic insensibility is as different from patience as a pool from a harbor; into the one, indolence naturally sinks us; but if we arrive at the other, it is by encountering many an adverse wind and rough wave, with a more skillful pilot at the helm than self, and a company under better command than the passions. [ L. W. Dilwyn ]