whom you have obliged; nor any music so agreeable to the ear, as the voice of one that owns you for his benefactor. The coin that is most current amongst mankind, is flattery; the only benefit of which is, that by hearing what we are not, we may be instructed what we ought to be. The character of the person who commends you, is to be considered, before you set a value on his esteem. The wise man applauds him whom he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world, him who is most wealthy. The temperate man's pleasures are durable, because they are regular; and all his life is calm and serene, because it is innocent. A good man will love himself too well to lose, and his neighbor too well to win, an estate by gaming. The love of gaming will corrupt the best principles in the world. CHAPTER VII. An angry man who suppresses his passions, thinks worse than he speaks; and an angry man that will chide, speaks worse than he thinks. A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill, requires only our silence, which costs us nothing. It is to affectation the world owes its whole race of coxcombs. Nature, in her whole drama, never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of his own making. It is the infirmity of little minds, to be taken with every appearance, and dazzled with every thing that sparkles; but great minds have but little admiration, because few things appear new to them. It happens to men of learning as to ears of corn: they shoot up, and raise their heads high, while they are empty, but when full and swelled with grain, they begin to flag and droop. He that is truly polite, knows how to contradict with respect, and to please without adulation; and is equally remote from an insipid complaisance, and a low familiarity. The failings of good men are commonly more published in the world than their good deeds. It is harder to avoid censure, than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but, to escape censure, a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. When Darius offered Alexander ten thousand talents to divide Asia equally with him, he answered: The earth cannot bear two suns, nor Asia two kings. Parmenio, a friend of Alexander's, hearing the great offers that Darius had made, said, Were I Alexander, I would accept them. So would I, replied Alexander, were I Parmenio. An old age unsupported with matter for discourse and meditation, is much to be dreaded. No state can be more destitute than that of him, who, when the delights of sense forsake him, has no pleasures of the mind. Such is the condition of life, that something is always wanted to happiness. In youth, we have warm hopes, which are soon blasted by rashness and negligence, and great designs, which are defeated by experience. In age, we have knowledge and prudence, without spirit to exert, or motives to prompt them. We are able to plan schemes and regulate measures, but have not time remaining to bring them to completion. Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips: whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. The pleasure which affects the human mind with the most lively and transporting touches, is the sense that we act in the eye of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, that will crown our virtuous endeavors here, with happiness hereafter, large as our desires, and lasting as our immortal souls; without this, the highest state of life is insipid, and with it, the lowest is a paradise. Honorable age is not that which stands in length of time, nor which is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the gray hair to man, and an unspotted life is old age. A rich man, beginning to fall, is held up by his friends; but a poor man, being down, is thrust away by his friends. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. If you would get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him; for some men are friends for their own occasions, and will not abide in the day of trouble. A friend cannot be known in prosperity; and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity. Admonish thy friend; it may be he hath not done it, and if he hath, that he should do it no more. Admonish thy friend; it may be he hath not said it, or if he hath, that he should speak it not again. Admonish a friend; for many times it is a slander; and believe not every tale. Honor thy father with thy whole heart, and forget not the sorrows of thy mother. How canst thou recompense them the things which they have done for thee? There is nothing of so much worth, as a mind well instructed. The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the tongue of the wise is in their heart. To labor, and to be contented with what a man hath, is a sweet life. Let reason go before every enterprise, and counsel before every action. The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former. Censure is a tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time. Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few. He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more, to maintain that one. Some people will never learn any thing, for this reason, because they understand every thing too soon. Whilst an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; when he is dead, we rate them by his best. Men are grateful, in the same degree that they are resentful. Young men are subtle arguers; the cloke of honor covers all their faults, as that of passion all their follies. Economy is no disgrace; it is better living on a little, than outliving a great deal. Next to the satisfaction I receive in the prosperity of an honest man, I am best pleased with the confusion of a rascal. To endeavor all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philosophy, is to spend so much in armor, that one has nothing left to defend. Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger. Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives to the persons who possess it, by the partiality it excites in their favor. The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty, seems to be chiefly in the motive. The honest man does that from duty, which the man of honor does for the sake of character. A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood. The higher character a person supports, the more he should regard his minutest actions. Deference is the most complicated, the most indirect, and most elegant of all compliments. How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning? Fine sense, and exalted sense, are not half so valuable as common sense. There are forty men of wit, for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of ready change. Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world, in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he was a rich man. It often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been most injured by slanderers; as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit, which the birds have been pecking at. Honor is but a fictitious kind of honesty; a mean, but a necessary substitute for it in societies which have none. It is a sort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the sterling cash of true morality and re ligion. CHAPTER VIII. What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! He is a good divine, that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what is good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. The sense of death is most in apprehension; How far the little candle throws his beam! Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us, What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted! -So it falls out, That what we have, we prize not to the worth, Cowards die many times before their deaths; O momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Ready with every nod to tumble down -Who will go about To cozen fortune, and be honorable O that estates, degrees, and offices, Were not derived corruptly, that clear honor |