QUOTE : Of the many kinds of knowledge upon which wisdom is based, the foremost must surely be self-knowledge, hard-won and often difficult to face. As more than one wag has put it, “The trouble with self-knowledge is that it’s so often bad news.” Bad news or not, it must be dealt with. Like no other characteristic of wisdom, this one is elusive, and too often the very thing we try so hard to avoid. The self-knowledge we believe ourselves to possess may actually be the self-delusion behind which we hide. But we fool ourselves at our own peril, and the peril only increases as we age. The slightest admission to one’s conscience of such a truth is the beginning of self-knowledge and well worth the pursuing, difficult though it may be.