Chapter 2

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,