What does this quote mean?

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”

The epigram satirizes the irritation produced when another person’s good conduct silently exposes our own shortcomings, making moral example feel inconvenient rather than inspiring.

Source note: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XIX epigraph; one of the Calendar maxims before the chapter.

“The world is a perpetual caricature of itself.”

Social appearances repeatedly exaggerate or contradict reality, making ordinary life look like an ongoing parody of its own pretensions.

Source note: Soliloquies in England, “Dickens”; Santayana uses caricature to describe the gap between living reality and conventional masks.

“ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.”

The narrator uses irony to show how not knowing enough can make almost anything seem plausible, widening speculation rather than understanding.

Source note: Daniel Deronda; narrator’s ironic observation while Gwendolen speculates about Grandcourt, represented from Project Gutenberg #7469.

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

The aphorism mocks reformers who find other people’s behavior easier to correct than their own, using a compact reversal to expose self-exemption and misplaced certainty.

Source note: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XV epigraph; a Calendar maxim immediately before the eggs-in-one-basket passage.

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”

The joke distinguishes healthy self-respect from vanity by showing how self-adoration can become a closed competition with everyone else.

Source note: Poor Richard’s Almanack.

“He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms.”

The sentence resists a single narrow standard of beauty and asks the critic to remain open to excellence appearing through different periods, types and schools.

Source note: The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. The following sentences extend the point across periods and schools of taste.