SELF-KNOWLEDGE

  
Because he was always the good-hearted one, the ingenuous one, the one
   who knew no cunning,
who, if "innocent" didn't quite apply, still merited some similar connota-
   tion of naïveté, simplicity,
the sense that an essential awareness of the coarseness of other people's
   motives was lacking
so that he was constantly blundering upon situations in which he would
   take on good faith
what the other rapaciously, ruthlessly, duplicitously and nearly always
   successfully offered as truth. . .
All of that he understood about himself but he was also aware that he
   couldn't alter at all
his basic affable faith in the benevolence of everyone's intentions and that 
   because of this the world
would not as in romance annihilate him but would toy unmercifully with 
   him until he was mad. 

-- C. K. Williams