Nothing more engages the affections of men, than a handsome address, and graceful conversation. Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable. Excess of ceremony shews want of breeding. That civility is best, which excludes all superfluous formality. Ingratitude is a crime so shameful, that the man was never yet found, who would acknowledge himself guilty of it. Truth is born with us; and we must do violence to nature, to shake off our veracity. There cannot be a greater treachery, than first to raise a confidence and then deceive it. By other's faults wise men correct their own. No man hath a thorough taste. of pros perity, to whom adversity never happened. When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves that we leave them. It is as great a point of wisdom to hide ignorance, as to discover knowledge. Pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent; and habit will render it the most delightful. Custom is the plague of wise men, and the idol of fools. As, to be perfectly just, is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man. No man was ever cast down with the injuries of fortune, unless he had before suffered himself to be deceived by her favours. Anger may glance into the breast of a wise man, but rests only in the bosom of fools. None more impatiently suffer injuries, than those that are most forward in doing them. By taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior. To err is human; to forgive, divine. A more glorious victory cannot be gained over another man, than this, that when the injury began on his part, the kindness should begin on ours. The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs himself. We should take a prudent care for the future, but so as to enjoy the present. It is no part of wisdom, to be miserable today, because we may happen to be so tomorrow. To mourn without measure, is folly; not to mourn at all, insensibility. Some would be thought to do great things, who are but tools and instruments; like the fool who fancied he played upon the organ, when he only blew the bellows. Though a man may become learned by another's learning; he can never be wise but by his own wisdom. He who wants good sense is unhappy in having learning; for he has thereby more ways of exposing himself. It is ungenerous to give a man occasion to blush at his own ignorance in one thing, who perhaps may excel us in many. No object is more pleasing to the eye, than the sight of a man 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 among 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 all his neighbours too well to win, an estate by gaming. The love of gaming will corrupt the best principles in the world. 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; and one fault of a deserving man shall meet with more reproaches, than all his virtues praise; such is the force of ill-will and ill-nature. 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, hearing the great offers Darius had made, said, were I Alexander I would accept them. So would I, replied Alexander, were I Parmenio. Nobility is to be considered only as an imaginary distinction, unless accompanied with the practice of those generous virtues by which it ought to be obtained. Titles of honour conferred upon such as have no personal merit, are at best but the royal stamp set upon base metal. could bequeath his virtues by will, and settle his sense and learning upon his heirs as certainly as he can his lands, a noble descent would then indeed be a valuable privilege. Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware: 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 endeavours here with a 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. Honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the grey hair unto man, and unspotted life is old age. Wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed with conscience, always forecasteth evil things; for fear is nothing else but a betraying of the succours which reason offereth. A wise man will fear in every thing. He that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little. A rich man beginning to fall, is held up of his friends; but a poor man being down, is thrust away by his friends; when a rich man is fallen he hath many helpers; he speaketh things not to be spoken, and yet men justify him: the poor man slipt, and they rebuked him; he spoke wisely, and could have no place. When a rich man speaketh, every man holdeth his tongue, and, look, what he saith they extol it to the clouds; but if a poor man speaks, they say, What fellow is this? Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. Well is he that is defended Though an honourable title may be from it, and hath not passed through the conveyed to posterity, yet the ennobling venom thereof; who hath not drawn the qualities which are the soul of greatness yoke thereof, nor been bound in her are a sort of incommunicable perfections, bonds; for the yoke thereof is a yoke and cannot be transferred. If a man of iron, and the bands thereof are bands of brass; the death thereof is an evil death. My son, blemish not thy good deeds, neither use uncomfortable words, when thou givest any thing. Shall not the dew assuage the heat? so is a word better than a gift. Lo, is not a word better than a gift? but both are with a gracious man. Blame not, before thou hast examined the truth; understand first, and then rebuke. If thou wouldest 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 thy trouble. Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure. 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 have, that he do it no more. Admonish thy friend; it may be he hath not said it; or if he have, that he speak it not again. Admonish a friend; for many times it is a slander; and believe not every tale. There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his heart; and who is he that hath not offended with his tongue? Whoso discovereth secrets loses his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind. Honour thy father with thy whole heart; and forget not the sorrows of thy mother; how canst thou recompense them the things that they have done for thee? There is nothing so much worth as a mind well instructed. The lips of talkers will be telling such things as pertain not unto them; but the words of such as have understanding are weighed in the balance. The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the tongue of the wise is in their heart. . To labour and to be content with that a man bath is a sweet life. Be at peace with many: nevertheless, have but one counsellor of a thousand. Be not confident in a plain way. 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 the 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. To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks of marble with a razor. Superstition is the spleen of the soul. 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. There is nothing wanting, to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day. Men are grateful in the same degree that they are resentful. Young men are subtle arguers; the cloak of honour 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. What is often termed shyness, is nothing more than a refined sense, and an indifference to common observations. The higher character a person supports, the more he should regard his minutest actions. Every person insensibly fixes upon some degree of refinement in his discourse, some measure of thought which he thinks worth exhibiting. It is wise to fix this pretty high, although it occasions one to talk the less. To endeavour all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philosophy, is to spend so much in armour, 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. Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves if they were in their places. People frequently use this expression: I am inclined to think so and so, not considering that they are then speaking the most literal of all truths. Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives the persons who labour un der it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favour. The difference there is betwixt honour and honesty seems to be chiefly in the motive. The honest man does that from duty, which the man of honour does for the sake of character. A liar begins with making a falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood. Virtue should be considered as a part of taste; and we should as much avoid deceit, or sinister meanings in discourse, as we would puns, bad language, or false grammar. Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. He that lies in bed all a summer's morning, loses the chief pleasure of the day; he that gives up his youth to indolence, undergoes a loss of the same kind. Shining characters are not always the most agreeable ones; the mild radiance of an emerald is by no means less pleasing than the glare of the ruby. To be at once a rake, and to glory in the character, discovers at the same time a bad disposition and a bad taste. How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning? Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of. 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 skilful hands; in unskilful, 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 to day 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 were a rich man. Flowers of rhetoric in sermons or serious discourses, are like the blue and red flowers in corn, pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap the profit. 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. The eye of a critic is often like a microscope, made so very fine and nice, that it discovers the atoms, grains, and minutest particles, without ever comprehending the whole, comparing the parts, or seeing all at once the harmony. Men's zeal for religion is much of the same kind as that which they shew for a foot-ball; whenever it is contested for, every one is ready to venture their lives and limbs in the dispute; but when that is once at an end, it is no more thought on, but sleeps in oblivion, buried in rubbish, which no one thinks it worth his pains to rake into, much less to re move. Honour is but a fictitious kind of bonesty; a mean but necessary substitute for it, in societies who 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 religion. Persons of great delicacy should know the certainty of the following truth.There are abundance of cases which occasion suspense, in which, whatever they determine, they will repent of their determination; and this through a propensity of human nature to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not pursue. The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in a natural manner, in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit? 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! If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. He is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were 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; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great, As when a giant dies. one. Little said soon amended. Fair words butter no parsnips. That penny is well spent that saves a groat to its master. Penny in pocket is a good companion. For all your kindred make much of your friends. He who hath money in his purse, cannot want an head for his shoulders. Great cry and little wool, quoth the devil, when he sheared his hogs. "Tis ill gaping before an oven. Where the hedge is lowest all men go over. When sorrow is asleep wake it not. Up-start's a churl that gathereth good, From whence did spring his noble blood. Provide for the worst the best will save itself. A covetous man like a dog in a wheel, roasts meat for others to eat. Speak me fair, and think what you will. Serve God in thy calling; 'tis better than always praying. A child may have too much of his mother's blessing. He who gives alms makes the best very use of his money. to. A wise man will neither speak nor do. Heaven once named, all other things are trifles. The patient man is always at home. Peace with heaven is the best friendship. The worst of crosses is never to have had any. |