"To adapt one's thoughts and arrange one's words, is sycophancy.
"To applaud a person, right or wrong, is flattery.
"To love speaking evil of others, is slander.
"To sever friendships and break ties, is mischievousness.
"To praise people falsely with a view to injure them, is malice.
"To give ready assent with a view to worm out the wishes of others, good and bad alike, is to be a hypocrite.
"These eight blemishes cause a man to throw others into confusion and bring injury upon himself. The superior man will not have him for a friend; the enlightened prince will not employ him as his minister.
"To love the conduct of great affairs, and to introduce change into established order with a view to gain reputation,—this is ambition.
"To strive to get all into one's own hands, and to usurp what should be at the disposal of others,—this is greed.
"To know one's faults but not to correct them, to receive admonition but only to plunge deeper,—this is obstinacy.
"To suffer those who are like oneself, but as for those unlike not to credit them with the virtues they really possess —this is bigotry.
"Such are the four things which obstruct business. And only he who can put aside the above
