Chapter 3

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-Rimes) where to each one puts what construction he pleases.

[The Bouts-Rimes 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.--Aime 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),