Chapter XL: Section 40: Even when you are fully justified in praising yourself,

you should never be seduced into doing so. For vanity is so very common, and merit so very uncommon, that even if a man appears to be praising himself, though very indirectly, people will be ready to lay a hundred to one that he is talking out of pure vanity, and that he has not sense enough to see what a fool he is making of himself.

Still, for all that, there may be some truth in Bacon's remark that, as in the case of calumny, if you throw enough dirt, some of it will stick, so it it also in regard to self-praise; with the conclusion that self-praise, in small doses, is to be recommended.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer alludes to the following passage in Bacon's _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, Bk. viii., ch. 2: _Sicut enim dici solet de calumnia_, audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret; _sic dici potest de jactantia, (nisi plane deformis fuerit et ridicula_), audacter te vendita, semper aliquid haeret. _Haerebit certe apud populum, licet prudentiores subrideant. Itaque existimatio parta apud plurimos paucorum fastidium abunde compensabit._]