Translator's Introduction (continued 2)

258.—Good taste arises more from judgment than wit.

259.—The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.

260.—Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed polite.

261.—The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.

262.—There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.

263.—What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which we like more than that we give away.

264.—Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We help others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these services which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves by anticipation.

["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is called compassion."—Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]

265.—A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see.

["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong." Dryden, Absalom And Achitophel{, line 547}.]

266.—We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues.

267.—A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.

268.—We credit judges with the meanest motives, and yet we desire our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us—and yet 'tis only to make these men decide in our favour that we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life.

269.—No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

270.—One honour won is a surety for more.

271.—Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.

["The best of life is but intoxication."—{Lord Byron, } Don Juan{, Canto II, stanza 179}. In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes with—"it is the fever of health, the folly of reason."]

272.—Nothing should so humiliate men who have deserved great praise, as the care they have taken to acquire it by the smallest means.

273.—There are persons of whom the world approves who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the affairs of life.

274.—The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower to the fruit; it lends a lustre which is easily lost, but which never returns.

275.—Natural goodness, which boasts of being so apparent, is often smothered by the least interest.

276.—Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.

277.—Women often think they love when they do not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing, persuades them that they have real passion when they have but flirtation.

["And if in fact she takes a {"}Grande Passion{"}, It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on. Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the {Tenth} instance will be a tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do." {—Lord Byron, }Don Juan, canto xii. stanza 77.]

278.—What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

279.—When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.

280.—The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established.

281.—Pride, which inspires, often serves to moderate envy.

282.—Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that we should judge badly were we not deceived.

283.—Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing how to use than in giving good advice.

284.—There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.

285.—Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

286.—It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really ceased to love.

287.—Fertility of mind does not furnish us with so many resources on the same matter, as the lack of intelligence makes us hesitate at each thing our imagination presents, and hinders us from at first discerning which is the best.

288.—There are matters and maladies which at certain times remedies only serve to make worse; true skill consists in knowing when it is dangerous to use them.

289.—Affected simplicity is refined imposture.

[Domitianus simplicitatis ac modestiae imagine studium litterarum et amorem carminum simulabat quo velaret animum et fratris aemulationi subduceretur.—Tacitus, Ann. iv.]

290.—There are as many errors of temper as of mind.

291.—Man's merit, like the crops, has its season.

292.—One may say of temper as of many buildings; it has divers aspects, some agreeable, others disagreeable.

293.—Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming Ambition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.

294.—We always like those who admire us, we do not always like those whom we admire.

295.—It is well that we know not all our wishes.

296.—It is difficult to love those we do not esteem, but it is no less so to love those whom we esteem much more than ourselves.

297.—Bodily temperaments have a common course and rule which imperceptibly affect our will. They advance in combination, and successively exercise a secret empire over us, so that, without our perceiving it, they become a great part of all our actions.

298.—The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

[Hence the common proverb "Gratitude is merely a lively sense of favors to come."]

299.—Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not show ingratitude for great favours.

300.—There are follies as catching as infections.

301.—Many people despise, but few know how to bestow wealth.

302.—Only in things of small value we usually are bold enough not to trust to appearances.

303.—Whatever good quality may be imputed to us, we ourselves find nothing new in it.

304.—We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

305.—Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds often should be praised for our good deeds.

306.—We find very few ungrateful people when we are able to confer favours.

307.—It is as proper to be boastful alone as it is ridiculous to be so in company.

308.—Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great; to console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small ability.

309.—There are persons fated to be fools, who commit follies not only by choice, but who are forced by fortune to do so.

310.—Sometimes there are accidents in our life the skilful extrication from which demands a little folly.

311.—If there be men whose folly has never appeared, it is because it has never been closely looked for.

312.—Lovers are never tired of each other,—they always speak of themselves.

313.—How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

["Old men who yet retain the memory of things past, and forget how often they have told them, are most tedious companions."—Montaigne, {Essays, Book I, Chapter IX}.]

314.—The extreme delight we take in talking of ourselves should warn us that it is not shared by those who listen.

315.—What commonly hinders us from showing the recesses of our heart to our friends, is not the distrust we have of them, but that we have of ourselves.

316.—Weak persons cannot be sincere.

317.—'Tis a small misfortune to oblige an ungrateful man; but it is unbearable to be obliged by a scoundrel.

318.—We may find means to cure a fool of his folly, but there are none to set straight a cross-grained spirit.

319.—If we take the liberty to dwell on their faults we cannot long preserve the feelings we should hold towards our friends and benefactors.

320.—To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is but to reproach them with impunity.

["Praise undeserved is satire in disguise," quoted by Pope from a poem which has not survived, "The Garland," by Mr. Broadhurst. "In some cases exaggerated or inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire."— Scott, Woodstock.]

321.—We are nearer loving those who hate us, than those who love us more than we desire.

322.—Those only are despicable who fear to be despised.

323.—Our wisdom is no less at the mercy of Fortune than our goods.

324.—There is more self-love than love in jealousy.

325.—We often comfort ourselves by the weakness of evils, for which reason has not the strength to console us.

326.—Ridicule dishonours more than dishonour itself.

["No," says a commentator, "Ridicule may do harm, but it cannot dishonour; it is vice which confers dishonour."]

327.—We own to small faults to persuade others that we have not great ones.

328.—Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred.

329.—We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery —we only dislike the method.

["{But} when I tell him he hates flatter{ers}, He says he does, being then most flattered." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar {,Act II, Scene I, Decius}.]

330.—We pardon in the degree that we love.

331.—It is more difficult to be faithful to a mistress when one is happy, than when we are ill-treated by her.

[Si qua volet regnare diu contemnat amantem.—Ovid, Amores, ii. 19.]

332.—Women do not know all their powers of flirtation.

333.—Women cannot be completely severe unless they hate.

334.—Women can less easily resign flirtations than love.

335.—In love deceit almost always goes further than mistrust.

336.—There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.

337.—There are certain good qualities as there are senses, and those who want them can neither perceive nor understand them.

338.—When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we hate.

339.—We only appreciate our good or evil in proportion to our self-love.

340.—The wit of most women rather strengthens their folly than their reason.

["Women have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit, but for solid reasoning and good sense I never knew one in my life that had it, and who reasoned and acted consequentially for four and twenty hours together."—Lord Chesterfield, Letter 129.]

341.—The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness of age.

342.—The accent of our native country dwells in the heart and mind as well as on the tongue.

343.—To be a great man one should know how to profit by every phase of fortune.

344.—Most men, like plants, possess hidden qualities which chance discovers.

345.—Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves.

346.—If a woman's temper is beyond control there can be no control of the mind or heart.

347.—We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us.

["That was excellently observed, say I, when I read an author when his opinion agrees with mine."—Swift, Thoughts On Various Subjects.]

348.—When one loves one doubts even what one most believes.

349.—The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate flirtation.

350.—Why we hate with so much bitterness those who deceive us is because they think themselves more clever than we are.

["I could pardon all his (Louis XI.'s) deceit, but I cannot forgive his supposing me capable of the gross folly of being duped by his professions."—Sir Walter Scott, Quentin Durward.]

351.—We have much trouble to break with one, when we no longer are in love.

352.—We almost always are bored with persons with whom we should not be bored.

353.—A gentleman may love like a lunatic, but not like a beast.

354.—There are certain defects which well mounted glitter like virtue itself.

355.—Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.

356.—Usually we only praise heartily those who admire us.

357.—Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

358.—Humility is the true proof of Christian virtues; without it we retain all our faults, and they are only covered by pride to hide them from others, and often from ourselves.

359.—Infidelities should extinguish love, and we ought not to be jealous when we have cause to be so. No persons escape causing jealousy who are worthy of exciting it.

360.—We are more humiliated by the least infidelity towards us, than by our greatest towards others.

361.—Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it.

362.—Most women do not grieve so much for the death of their lovers for love's-sake, as to show they were worthy of being beloved.

363.—The evils we do to others give us less pain than those we do to ourselves.

364.—We well know that it is bad taste to talk of our wives; but we do not so well know that it is the same to speak of ourselves.

365.—There are virtues which degenerate into vices when they arise from Nature, and others which when acquired are never perfect. For example, reason must teach us to manage our estate and our confidence, while Nature should have given us goodness and valour.

366.—However we distrust the sincerity of those whom we talk with, we always believe them more sincere with us than with others.

367.—There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.

["Every woman is at heart a rake."—Pope. Moral Essays, ii.]

368.—The greater number of good women are like concealed treasures, safe as no one has searched for them.

369.—The violences we put upon ourselves to escape love are often more cruel than the cruelty of those we love.

370.—There are not many cowards who know the whole of their fear.

371.—It is generally the fault of the loved one not to perceive when love ceases.

372.—Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.

373.—Some tears after having deceived others deceive ourselves.

374.—If we think we love a woman for love of herself we are greatly deceived.

375.—Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.

376.—Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.

377.—The greatest mistake of penetration is not to have fallen short, but to have gone too far.

378.—We may bestow advice, but we cannot inspire the conduct.

379.—As our merit declines so also does our taste.

380.—Fortune makes visible our virtues or our vices, as light does objects.

381.—The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is little better than infidelity.

382.—Our actions are like the rhymed ends of blank verses (Bouts-Rimés) where to each one puts what construction he pleases.

[The Bouts-Rimés was a literary game popular in the 17th and 18th centuries—the rhymed words at the end of a line being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the burlesque verse— "I sits with my toes in a Brook, And if any one axes me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy makes me, ses I."]

383.—The desire of talking about ourselves, and of putting our faults in the light we wish them to be seen, forms a great part of our sincerity.

384.—We should only be astonished at still being able to be astonished.

385.—It is equally as difficult to be contented when one has too much or too little love.

386.—No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.

387.—A fool has not stuff in him to be good.

388.—If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter.

389.—What makes the vanity of others unsupportable is that it wounds our own.

390.—We give up more easily our interest than our taste.

391.—Fortune appears so blind to none as to those to whom she has done no good.

392.—We should manage fortune like our health, enjoy it when it is good, be patient when it is bad, and never resort to strong remedies but in an extremity.

393.—Awkwardness sometimes disappears in the camp, never in the court.

394.—A man is often more clever than one other, but not than all others.

["Singuli decipere ac decipi possunt, nemo omnes, omnes neminem fefellerunt."—Pliny{ the Younger, Panegyricus, LXII}.]

395.—We are often less unhappy at being deceived by one we loved, than on being deceived.

396.—We keep our first lover for a long time—if we do not get a second.

397.—We have not the courage to say generally that we have no faults, and that our enemies have no good qualities; but in fact we are not far from believing so.

398.—Of all our faults that which we most readily admit is idleness: we believe that it makes all virtues ineffectual, and that without utterly destroying, it at least suspends their operation.

399.—There is a kind of greatness which does not depend upon fortune: it is a certain manner what distinguishes us, and which seems to destine us for great things; it is the value we insensibly set upon ourselves; it is by this quality that we gain the deference of other men, and it is this which commonly raises us more above them, than birth, rank, or even merit itself.

400.—There may be talent without position, but there is no position without some kind of talent.

401.—Rank is to merit what dress is to a pretty woman.

402.—What we find the least of in flirtation is love.

403.—Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us, and there are tiresome people whose deserts would be ill rewarded if we did not desire to purchase their absence.

404.—It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

405.—We reach quite inexperienced the different stages of life, and often, in spite of the number of our years, we lack experience.

["To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumine only the track it has passed."— Coleridge.]

406.—Flirts make it a point of honour to be jealous of their lovers, to conceal their envy of other women.

407.—It may well be that those who have trapped us by their tricks do not seem to us so foolish as we seem to ourselves when trapped by the tricks of others.

408.—The most dangerous folly of old persons who have been loveable is to forget that they are no longer so.

["Every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome. The suspicion of age no woman, let her be ever so old, forgives."—Lord Chesterfield, Letter 129.]

409.—We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world only saw the motives which caused them.

410.—The greatest effort of friendship is not to show our faults to a friend, but to show him his own.

4ll.—We have few faults which are not far more excusable than the means we adopt to hide them.

412.—Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.

["This is hardly a period at which the most irregular character may not be redeemed. The mistakes of one sin find a retreat in patriotism, those of the other in devotion." —Junius, Letter To The King.]

413.—A man cannot please long who has only one kind of wit.

[According to Segrais this maxim was a hit at Racine and Boileau, who, despising ordinary conversation, talked incessantly of literature; but there is some doubt as to Segrais' statement.—Aimé Martin.]

414.—Idiots and lunatics see only their own wit.

415.—Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.

416.—The vivacity which increases in old age is not far removed from folly.

["How ill {white} hairs become {a} fool and jester."— {Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II, Act. V, Scene V, King}.

"Can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can grey hairs make folly venerable, and is there no period to be reserved for meditation or retirement."— Junius, To The Duke Of Bedford, 19th Sept. 1769.]

417.—In love the quickest is always the best cure.

418.—Young women who do not want to appear flirts, and old men who do not want to appear ridiculous, should not talk of love as a matter wherein they can have any interest.

419.—We may seem great in a post beneath our capacity, but we oftener seem little in a post above it.

420.—We often believe we have constancy in misfortune when we have nothing but debasement, and we suffer misfortunes without regarding them as cowards who let themselves be killed from fear of defending themselves.

421.—Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

422.—All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.

["In love we all are fools alike."—Gay{, The Beggar's Opera, (1728), Act III, Scene I, Lucy}.]

423.—Few know how to be old.

424.—We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.

425.—Penetration has a spice of divination in it which tickles our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

426.—The charm of novelty and old custom, however opposite to each other, equally blind us to the faults of our friends.

["Two things the most opposite blind us equally, custom and novelty."-La Bruyère, Des Judgements.]

427.—Most friends sicken us of friendship, most devotees of devotion.

428.—We easily forgive in our friends those faults we do not perceive.

429.—Women who love, pardon more readily great indiscretions than little infidelities.

430.—In the old age of love as in life we still survive for the evils, though no longer for the pleasures.

["The youth of friendship is better than its old age." —Hazlitt's Characteristics, 229.]

431.—Nothing prevents our being unaffected so much as our desire to seem so.

432.—To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them.

433.—The most certain sign of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy.

["Nemo alienae virtuti invidet qui satis confidet suae." —Cicero In Marc Ant.]

434.—When our friends have deceived us we owe them but indifference to the tokens of their friendship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe them pity.

435.—Luck and temper rule the world.

436.—It is far easier to know men than to know man.

437.—We should not judge of a man's merit by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.

438.—There is a certain lively gratitude which not only releases us from benefits received, but which also, by making a return to our friends as payment, renders them indebted to us.

["And understood not that a grateful mind, By owing owes not, but is at once Indebted and discharged." Milton. Paradise Lost.]

439.—We should earnestly desire but few things if we clearly knew what we desired.

440.—The cause why the majority of women are so little given to friendship is, that it is insipid after having felt love.

["Those who have experienced a great passion neglect friendship, and those who have united themselves to friendship have nought to do with love."—La Bruyère. Du Coeur.]

441.—As in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance than from knowledge.

442.—We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct.

443.—The most violent passions give some respite, but vanity always disturbs us.

444.—Old fools are more foolish than young fools.

["Malvolio. Infirmity{,} that decays the wise{,} doth eve{r} make the better fool. Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity{,} for the better increasing of your folly."—Shakespeare. Twelfth Night{, Act I, Scene V}.]

445.—Weakness is more hostile to virtue than vice.

446.—What makes the grief of shame and jealousy so acute is that vanity cannot aid us in enduring them.

447.—Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed.

[Honour has its supreme laws, to which education is bound to conform....Those things which honour forbids are more rigorously forbidden when the laws do not concur in the prohibition, and those it commands are more strongly insisted upon when they happen not to be commanded by law.—Montesquieu, {The Spirit Of Laws, }b. 4, c. ii.]

448.—A well-trained mind has less difficulty in submitting to than in guiding an ill-trained mind.

449.—When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it.

450.—Our pride is often increased by what we retrench from our other faults.

["The loss of sensual pleasures was supplied and compensated by spiritual pride."—Gibbon. Decline And Fall, chap. xv.]

451.—No fools so wearisome as those who have some wit.

452.—No one believes that in every respect he is behind the man he considers the ablest in the world.

453.—In great matters we should not try so much to create opportunities as to utilise those that offer themselves.

[Yet Lord Bacon says "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."—Essays, {(1625), "Of Ceremonies and Respects"}]

454.—There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.

455.—However disposed the world may be to judge wrongly, it far oftener favours false merit than does justice to true.

456.—Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.

457.—We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by trying to seem what we are not.

458.—Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.

459.—There are many remedies to cure love, yet none are infallible.

460.—It would be well for us if we knew all our passions make us do.

461.—Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of life all the pleasures of youth.

462.—The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.

463.—There is often more pride than goodness in our grief for our enemies' miseries; it is to show how superior we are to them, that we bestow on them the sign of our compassion.

464.—There exists an excess of good and evil which surpasses our comprehension.

465.—Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the same protection as crime.

466.—Of all the violent passions the one that becomes a woman best is love.

467.—Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.

468.—Some bad qualities form great talents.

469.—We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason.

470.—All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful, both the good as well as the bad, and nearly all are creatures of opportunities.

471.—In their first passion women love their lovers, in all the others they love love.

["In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all her others what she loves is love." {—Lord Byron, }Don Juan, Canto iii., stanza 3. "We truly love once, the first time; the subsequent passions are more or less involuntary." La Bruyère: Du Coeur.]

472.—Pride as the other passions has its follies. We are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume ourselves in having been and being able to be so.

473.—However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.

["It is more common to see perfect love than real friendship."—La Bruyère. Du Coeur.]

474.—There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.

475.—The desire to be pitied or to be admired often forms the greater part of our confidence.

476.—Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

477.—The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to make our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by passions are seldom really possessed of any.

478.—Fancy does not enable us to invent so many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.

479.—It is only people who possess firmness who can possess true gentleness. In those who appear gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily converted into harshness.

480.—Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to blame in those we desire to cure of it.

481.—Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

482.—The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the full extent of its capacities.

483.—Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.

484.—When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.

485.—Those who have had great passions often find all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.

486.—More persons exist without self-love than without envy.

["I do not believe that there is a human creature in his senses arrived at maturity, that at some time or other has not been carried away by this passion (envy) in good earnest, and yet I never met with any who dared own he was guilty of it, but in jest."—Mandeville: Fable Of The Bees; Remark N.]

487.—We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.

488.—The calm or disturbance of our mind does not depend so much on what we regard as the more important things of life, as in a judicious or injudicious arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.

489.—However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

490.—We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from ambition to love.

["Men commence by love, finish by ambition, and do not find a quieter seat while they remain there."—La Bruyère: Du Coeur.]

491.—Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.

492.—Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations, others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.

[Aimé Martin says, "The author here confuses greediness, the desire and avarice—passions which probably have a common origin, but produce different results. The greedy man is nearly always desirous to possess, and often foregoes great future advantages for small present interests. The avaricious man, on the other hand, mistakes present advantages for the great expectations of the future. Both desire to possess and enjoy. But the miser possesses and enjoys nothing but the pleasure of possessing; he risks nothing, gives nothing, hopes nothing, his life is centred in his strong box, beyond that he has no want."]

493.—It appears that men do not find they have enough faults, as they increase the number by certain peculiar qualities that they affect to assume, and which they cultivate with so great assiduity that at length they become natural faults, which they can no longer correct.

494.—What makes us see that men know their faults better than we imagine, is that they are never wrong when they speak of their conduct; the same self-love that usually blinds them enlightens them, and gives them such true views as to make them suppress or disguise the smallest thing that might be censured.

495.—Young men entering life should be either shy or bold; a solemn and sedate manner usually degenerates into impertinence.

496.—Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

497.—It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.

498.—Some persons are so frivolous and fickle that they are as far removed from real defects as from substantial qualities.

499.—We do not usually reckon a woman's first flirtation until she has had a second.

500.—Some people are so self-occupied that when in love they find a mode by which to be engrossed with the passion without being so with the person they love.

501.—Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more by its ways than by itself.

502.—A little wit with good sense bores less in the long run than much wit with ill nature.

503.—Jealousy is the worst of all evils, yet the one that is least pitied by those who cause it.

504.—Thus having treated of the hollowness of so many apparent virtues, it is but just to say something on the hollowness of the contempt for death. I allude to that contempt of death which the heathen boasted they derived from their unaided understanding, without the hope of a future state. There is a difference between meeting death with courage and despising it. The first is common enough, the last I think always feigned. Yet everything that could be has been written to persuade us that death is no evil, and the weakest of men, equally with the bravest, have given many noble examples on which to found such an opinion, still I do not think that any man of good sense has ever yet believed in it. And the pains we take to persuade others as well as ourselves amply show that the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may be disgusted with life, but for none may we despise it. Not even those who commit suicide regard it as a light matter, and are as much alarmed and startled as the rest of the world if death meets them in a different way than the one they have selected. The difference we observe in the courage of so great a number of brave men, is from meeting death in a way different from what they imagined, when it shows itself nearer at one time than at another. Thus it ultimately happens that having despised death when they were ignorant of it, they dread it when they become acquainted with it. If we could avoid seeing it with all its surroundings, we might perhaps believe that it was not the greatest of evils. The wisest and bravest are those who take the best means to avoid reflecting on it, as every man who sees it in its real light regards it as dreadful. The necessity of dying created all the constancy of philosophers. They thought it but right to go with a good grace when they could not avoid going, and being unable to prolong their lives indefinitely, nothing remained but to build an immortal reputation, and to save from the general wreck all that could be saved. To put a good face upon it, let it suffice, not to say all that we think to ourselves, but rely more on our nature than on our fallible reason, which might make us think we could approach death with indifference. The glory of dying with courage, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave behind us a good reputation, the assurance of being enfranchised from the miseries of life and being no longer dependent on the wiles of fortune, are resources which should not be passed over. But we must not regard them as infallible. They should affect us in the same proportion as a single shelter affects those who in war storm a fortress. At a distance they think it may afford cover, but when near they find it only a feeble protection. It is only deceiving ourselves to imagine that death, when near, will seem the same as at a distance, or that our feelings, which are merely weaknesses, are naturally so strong that they will not suffer in an attack of the rudest of trials. It is equally as absurd to try the effect of self-esteem and to think it will enable us to count as naught what will of necessity destroy it. And the mind in which we trust to find so many resources will be far too weak in the struggle to persuade us in the way we wish. For it is this which betrays us so frequently, and which, instead of filling us with contempt of death, serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful. The most it can do for us is to persuade us to avert our gaze and fix it on other objects. Cato and Brutus each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime ago contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when he was about to be broken on the wheel. So however diverse the motives they but realize the same result. For the rest it is a fact that whatever difference there may be between the peer and the peasant, we have constantly seen both the one and the other meet death with the same composure. Still there is always this difference, that the contempt the peer shows for death is but the love of fame which hides death from his sight; in the peasant it is but the result of his limited vision that hides from him the extent of the evil, end leaves him free to reflect on other things.