Know your strongest quality. Know your preeminent gift—cultivate it and it will assist the rest. Everyone would have excelled in something if he had known his strongest point. Notice in what quality you surpass and take charge of that. In some people judgment excels, in others valor. Most do violence to their natural aptitude and thus attain superiority in nothing. Time enlightens us too late of what was first only a flattering of passions.

THE ART OF WORLDLY WISDOM BY BALTHASAR GRACIAN
TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH JACOBS 1892