Just get the confidence of as many readers as you can, grapple some of the most divergent minds with hooks of steel; and in finding out how little you know that is of any real value to anyone else, you will begin to be of some little value to yourself.

Don't try to direct.

The fellow that wants your direction will cause you to ooze out the information he needs, and you will hardly know that you have told him anything.
I may be, and doubtless am, saying much that is quite unnecessary, but I have tried to bear in mind some of my own mistakes, and of others around me.

I have been impressed with the fact that librarians seem to think that they must or ought to know everything, and get to think they do know.

It is a delusion.