“My ignorance is trying to flatter me that I know everything.”

“No. Never. I have to try my best or I'll become worse and worse. Even if I can't make up with them. Even if they all ignore me. I still have to try my best.”

“Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”

“I guess what I'm trying to say is that you are there, in everything I am, in everything I've ever done, and looking back, I know that I should have told you know much you've always meant to me.”

“The little I know, I owe to my ignorance.”

“A flatterer can risk everything with great personages.”

“Don’t flaunt your ignorance or try to insult me. I don’t suffer fools gladly and insults irritate me”

“So I'll do that, and I'll do my best and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”

“You have an amazing ability to depress me sometimes, you know that?"
"I try my best.”

“Try to know everything about something and something about everything.”