There is a wide range of apothegms which are available to provide direction in matters of the heart and mind. There is clearly also an application to business and commerce. I’d like to touch upon the sometimes delicate though predominant matter of trust. It’s possible that the trustworthiness of a person depends upon as little as the weather, so mercurial at times is the persuasion. Even associating someone  with vastly superior ornaments such as intellect or rationality does little to advance the inquiry . In the end we make our own choice upon what credentials are convincing. Here are some suggested rules to ponder.

1.  Trust you’re instincts. As clever – that is, as cerebral as we may intend to be the trump card in matters of lingering debate must always be the gut, that is the visceral. There’s a reason an animal runs from danger – and it is seldom a reasoned decision.
2. If she knows why she loves him she doesn’t. Don’t be persuaded by flattery. It is a net before another man’s feet.
3. Criticism is the best autobiography.
4. ”Nemo dat quod non habet”. No one gives what he does not have. This maxim is an elemental feature of the British Common Law which washed upon the Atlantic shores with the Pilgrims in 1620. Aside from its applicability to immediate issues it extends to such esoteric refinement as the American Constitution (establishing the division between federal and state legislatures). It invites the query, “By what authority do you act?“
5. “He who is delegated may not delicate further”. Only a direct appointee is entitled to speak on behalf of his principal. Otherwise you’re attributing responsibility to an unauthorized person to do what he was never appointed to do.

“The ruler of Riseholme, happier than he of Russia, had no need to fear the finger of Bolshevism writing on the wall, for there was not in the whole of that vat which seethed so pleasantly with culture, one bubble of revolutionary ferment. Here there was neither poverty nor discontent nor muttered menace of any upheaval: Mrs Lucas, busy and serene, worked harder than any of her subjects, and exercised an autocratic control over a nominal democracy.”