REFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

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Franois duc de La Rochefoucauld
REFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

[This epigraph which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the maxims of the first edition, 1665, it is omitted from the 2nd and 3rd, and reappears for the first time in the 4th edition, in 1675, as at present, at the head of the Reflections.—AimÉ Martin. Its best answer is arrived at by reversing the predicate and the subject, and you at once form a contradictory maxim equally true, our vices are most frequently but virtues disguised.]


1.—What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.

"Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave; Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise, His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies." Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. i. line 115.


2.—Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.


3.—Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love, there remain many unexplored territories there.

[This is the first hint of the system the author tries to develope. He wishes to find in vice a motive for all our actions, but this does not suffice him; he is obliged to call other passions to the help of his system and to confound pride, vanity, interest and egotism with self love. This confusion destroys the unity of his principle.—AimÉ Martin.]


4.—Self love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.


5.—The duration of our passions is no more dependant upon us than the duration of our life. [Then what becomes of free will?—AimÉ; Martin]


6.—Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.


7.—Great and striking actions which dazzle the eyes are represented by politicians as the effect of great designs, instead of which they are commonly caused by the temper and the passions. Thus the war between Augustus and Anthony, which is set down to the ambition they entertained of making themselves masters of the world, was probably but an effect of jealousy.


8.—The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

[See Maxim 249 which is an illustration of this.]


9.—The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.


10.—In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.


11.—Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity.


12.—Whatever care we take to conceal our passions under the appearances of piety and honour, they are always to be seen through these veils.

[The 1st edition, 1665, preserves the image perhaps better—"however we may conceal our passions under the veil, etc., there is always some place where they peep out."]


13.—Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.


14.—Men are not only prone to forget benefits and injuries; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.


15.—The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.

["So many are the advantages which monarchs gain by clemency, so greatly does it raise their fame and endear them to their subjects, that it is generally happy for them to have an opportunity of displaying it."—Montesquieu, Esprit Des Lois, Lib. VI., C. 21.]


16.—This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.

[La Rochefoucauld is content to paint the age in which he lived. Here the clemency spoken of is nothing more than an expression of the policy of Anne of Austria. Rochefoucauld had sacrificed all to her; even the favour of Cardinal Richelieu, but when she became regent she bestowed her favours upon those she hated; her friends were forgotten.—AimÉ Martin. The reader will hereby see that the age in which the writer lived best interprets his maxims.]


17.—The moderation of those who are happy arises from the calm which good fortune bestows upon their temper.


18.—Moderation is caused by the fear of exciting the envy and contempt which those merit who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain display of our strength of mind, and in short the moderation of men at their greatest height is only a desire to appear greater than their fortune.


19.—We have all sufficient strength to support the misfortunes of others.

[The strongest example of this is the passage in Lucretius, lib. ii., line I:— "Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem."]


20.—The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.

[Thus wisdom is only hypocrisy, says a commentator. This definition of constancy is a result of maxim 18.]


21.—Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

[See this thought elaborated in maxim 504.]


22.—Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.


23.—Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.


24.—When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

[Both these maxims have been rewritten and made conciser by the author; the variations are not worth quoting.]


25.—We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.

["Prosperity do{th} best discover vice, but adversity do{th} best discover virtue."—Lord Bacon, Essays{, (1625), "Of Adversity"}.]

{The quotation wrongly had "does" for "doth".}


26.—Neither the sun nor death can be looked at without winking.


27.—People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.


28.—Jealousy is in a manner just and reasonable, as it tends to preserve a good which belongs, or which we believe belongs to us, on the other hand envy is a fury which cannot endure the happiness of others.


29.—The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.


30.—We have more strength than will; and it is often merely for an excuse we say things are impossible.


31.—If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.


32.—Jealousy lives upon doubt; and comes to an end or becomes a fury as soon as it passes from doubt to certainty.


33.—Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.

[See maxim 450, where the author states, what we take from our other faults we add to our pride.]


34.—If we had no pride we should not complain of that of others.

["The proud are ever most provoked by pride."—Cowper, Conversation 160.]


35.—Pride is much the same in all men, the only difference is the method and manner of showing it.

["Pride bestowed on all a common friend."—Pope, Essay On Man, Ep. ii., line 273.]


36.—It would seem that nature, which has so wisely ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has also given us pride to spare us the mortification of knowing our imperfections.


37.—Pride has a larger part than goodness in our remonstrances with those who commit faults, and we reprove them not so much to correct as to persuade them that we ourselves are free from faults.


38.—We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.

["The reason why the Cardinal (Mazarin) deferred so long to grant the favours he had promised, was because he was persuaded that hope was much more capable of keeping men to their duty than gratitude."—Fragments Historiques. Racine.]


39.—Interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters; even that of disinterestedness.


40.—Interest blinds some and makes some see.


41.—Those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things.


42.—We have not enough strength to follow all our reason.


43.—A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind endeavours to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.


44.—Strength and weakness of mind are mis-named; they are really only the good or happy arrangement of our bodily organs.


45.—The caprice of our temper is even more whimsical than that of Fortune.


46.—The attachment or indifference which philosophers have shown to life is only the style of their self love, about which we can no more dispute than of that of the palate or of the choice of colours.


47.—Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from fortune.


48.—Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like.


49.—We are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose.


50.—Those who think they have merit persuade themselves that they are honoured by being unhappy, in order to persuade others and themselves that they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.

["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other." —Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I, Sect. XVII}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite Speech On Conciliation With America. Also, Burke does not actually write "Ambition has been...", he writes "It has been..." when speaking of ambition.}


51.—Nothing should so much diminish the satisfaction which we feel with ourselves as seeing that we disapprove at one time of that which we approve of at another.


52.—Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them equal.


53.—Whatever great advantages nature may give, it is not she alone, but fortune also that makes the hero.


54.—The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance."—Gibbon, Decline And Fall, Chap. 15.]


55.—The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.


56.—To establish ourselves in the world we do everything to appear as if we were established.


57.—Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance.


58.—It would seem that our actions have lucky or unlucky stars to which they owe a great part of the blame or praise which is given them.


59.—There are no accidents so unfortunate from which skilful men will not draw some advantage, nor so fortunate that foolish men will not turn them to their hurt.


60.—Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles.


61.—The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.

["Still to ourselves in every place consigned Our own felicity we make or find." Goldsmith, Traveller, 431.]


62.—Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.


63.—The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.


64.—Truth does not do as much good in the world, as its counterfeits do evil.


65.—There is no praise we have not lavished upon Prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

[The author corrected this maxim several times, in 1665 it is No. 75; 1666, No. 66; 1671-5, No. 65; in the last edition it stands as at present. In the first he quotes Juvenal, Sat. X., line 315. " Nullum numen habes si sit Prudentia, nos te; Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, coeloque locamus." Applying to Prudence what Juvenal does to Fortune, and with much greater force.]


66.—A clever man ought to so regulate his interests that each will fall in due order. Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after so many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after the least we miss the greatest.


67.—What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.


68.—It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love—Plus many mysteries.

["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly beloved."—Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]

{Two notes about this quotation: (1) the translators' mistakenly have "singularity" for the first "singularly" and (2) Hobbes does not actually write "Love is the..."—he writes "Love of one..." under the heading "The passion of Love."}


69.—If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and of which even ourselves are ignorant.


70.—There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.


71.—There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer.


72.—If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather resembles hatred than friendship.


73.—We may find women who have never indulged in an intrigue, but it is rare to find those who have intrigued but once.

["Yet there are some, they say, who have had {None}; But those who have, ne'er end with only one}." {—Lord Byron, }Don Juan, {Canto} iii., stanza 4.]


74.—There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different copies.


75.—Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

[So Lord Byron{Stanzas, (1819), stanza 3} says of Love— "Like chiefs of faction, His life is action."]


76.—There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.

["Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art— An unseen seraph, we believe in thee— A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,— But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form as it should be." {—Lord Byron, }Childe Harold, {Canto} iv., stanza 121.]


77.—Love lends its name to an infinite number of engagements (Commerces) which are attributed to it, but with which it has no more concern than the Doge has with all that is done in Venice.


78.—The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.


79.—Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself.


80.—What renders us so changeable in our friendship is, that it is difficult to know the qualities of the soul, but easy to know those of the mind.


81.—We can love nothing but what agrees with us, and we can only follow our taste or our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves; nevertheless it is only by that preference that friendship can be true and perfect.


82.—Reconciliation with our enemies is but a desire to better our condition, a weariness of war, the fear of some unlucky accident.

["Thus terminated that famous war of the Fronde. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld desired peace because of his dangerous wounds and ruined castles, which had made him dread even worse events. On the other side the Queen, who had shown herself so ungrateful to her too ambitious friends, did not cease to feel the bitterness of their resentment. ‘I wish,' said she, ‘it were always night, because daylight shows me so many who have betrayed me.'"—Memoires De Madame De Motteville, Tom. IV., p. 60. Another proof that although these maxims are in some cases of universal application, they were based entirely on the experience of the age in which the author lived.]


83.—What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours—in fact it is but a trade in which self love always expects to gain something.


84.—It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends.


85.—We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.


86.—Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.


87.—Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other.

[A maxim, adds AimÉ Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."—2 TIM. iii. 13.]


88.—Self love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them, and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.


89.—Everyone blames his memory, no one blames his judgment.


90.—In the intercourse of life, we please more by our faults than by our good qualities.


91.—The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.


92.—To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him.

[That is, they cured him. The madman was Thrasyllus, son of Pythodorus. His brother Crito cured him, when he infinitely regretted the time of his more pleasant madness.—See Aelian, Var. Hist. iv. 25. So Horace— ——————"Pol, me occidistis, amici, Non servastis," ait, "cui sic extorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error." HOR. EP. ii—2, 138, of the madman who was cured of a pleasant lunacy.]


93.—Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.


94.—Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to sustain them.


95.—The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it.


96.—A man is perhaps ungrateful, but often less chargeable with ingratitude than his benefactor is.


97.—We are deceived if we think that mind and judgment are two different matters: judgment is but the extent of the light of the mind. This light penetrates to the bottom of matters; it remarks all that can be remarked, and perceives what appears imperceptible. Therefore we must agree that it is the extent of the light in the mind that produces all the effects which we attribute to judgment.


98.—Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.


99.—Politeness of mind consists in thinking chaste and refined thoughts.


100.—Gallantry of mind is saying the most empty things in an agreeable manner.


101.—Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labour.


102.—The head is ever the dupe of the heart.

[A feeble imitation of that great thought "All folly comes from the heart."—AimÉ Martin. But Bonhome, in his L'art De Penser, says "Plusieurs diraient en pÉriode quarrÉ que quelques reflexions que fasse l'esprit et quelques resolutions qu'il prenne pour corriger ses travers le premier sentiment du coeur renverse tous ses projets. Mais il n'appartient qu'a M. de la Rochefoucauld de dire tout en un mot que l'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur."]


103.—Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts.


104.—Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.


105.—A man for whom accident discovers sense, is not a rational being. A man only is so who understands, who distinguishes, who tests it.


106.—To understand matters rightly we should understand their details, and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.


107.—One kind of flirtation is to boast we never flirt.


108.—The head cannot long play the part of the heart.


109.—Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood, age retains its tastes by habit.


110.—Nothing is given so profusely as advice.


111.—The more we love a woman the more prone we are to hate her.


112.—The blemishes of the mind, like those of the face, increase by age.


113.—There may be good but there are no pleasant marriages.


114.—We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and betrayed by our friends, yet still we are often content to be thus served by ourselves.


115.—It is as easy unwittingly to deceive oneself as to deceive others.


116.—Nothing is less sincere than the way of asking and giving advice. The person asking seems to pay deference to the opinion of his friend, while thinking in reality of making his friend approve his opinion and be responsible for his conduct. The person giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him by eager and disinterested zeal, in doing which he is usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.

["I have often thought how ill-natured a maxim it was which on many occasions I have heard from people of good understanding, ‘That as to what related to private conduct no one was ever the better for advice.' But upon further examination I have resolved with myself that the maxim might be admitted without any violent prejudice to mankind. For in the manner advice was generally given there was no reason I thought to wonder it should be so ill received, something there was which strangely inverted the case, and made the giver to be the only gainer. For by what I could observe in many occurrences of our lives, that which we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense. On the other side to be instructed or to receive advice on the terms usually prescribed to us was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects."—Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics, i., 153.]


117.—The most subtle of our acts is to simulate blindness for snares that we know are set for us. We are never so easily deceived as when trying to deceive.


118.—The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.


119.—We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.

["Those who quit their proper character{,} to assume what does not belong to them, are{,} for the greater part{,} ignorant both of the character they leave{,} and of the character they assume."—Burke, {Reflections On The Revolution In France, (1790), Paragraph 19}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite Thoughts On The Cause Of The Present Discontents.}


120.—We often act treacherously more from weakness than from a fixed motive.


121.—We frequently do good to enable us with impunity to do evil.


122.—If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.


123.—If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.


124.—The most deceitful persons spend their lives in blaming deceit, so as to use it on some great occasion to promote some great interest.


125.—The daily employment of cunning marks a little mind, it generally happens that those who resort to it in one respect to protect themselves lay themselves open to attack in another.

["With that low cunning which in fools supplies, And amply, too, the place of being wise." Churchill, Rosciad, 117.]


126.—Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity.


127.—The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.


128.—Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.


129.—It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.


130.—Weakness is the only fault which cannot be cured.


131.—The smallest fault of women who give themselves up to love is to love. [———"Faciunt graviora coactae Imperio sexus minimumque libidine peccant." Juvenal, Sat. vi., 134.]


132.—It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself.

[Hence the proverb, "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client."]


133.—The only good examples are those, that make us see the absurdity of bad originals.


134.—We are never so ridiculous from the habits we have as from those that we affect to have.


135.—We sometimes differ more widely from ourselves than we do from others.


136.—There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.


137.—When not prompted by vanity we say little.


138.—A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing.

["Montaigne's vanity led him to talk perpetually of himself, and as often happens to vain men, he would rather talk of his own failings than of any foreign subject."— Hallam, Literature Of Europe.]


139.—One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation is there is hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of his answer to what is said. The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say. Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation.

["An absent man can make but few observations, he can pursue nothing steadily because his absences make him lose his way. They are very disagreeable and hardly to be tolerated in old age, but in youth they cannot be forgiven." —Lord Chesterfield, Letter 195.]


140.—If it was not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.


141.—We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.


142.—As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

["So much they talked, so very little said." Churchill, Rosciad, 550.

"Men who are unequal to the labour of discussing an argument or wish to avoid it, are willing enough to suppose that much has been proved because much has been said."— Junius, Jan. 1769.]


143.—It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise.


144.—We do not like to praise, and we never praise without a motive. Praise is flattery, artful, hidden, delicate, which gratifies differently him who praises and him who is praised. The one takes it as the reward of merit, the other bestows it to show his impartiality and knowledge.


145.—We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.


146.—Usually we only praise to be praised.


147.—Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous.


148.—Some reproaches praise; some praises reproach.

["Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." Pope {Essay On Man, (1733), Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot.}]


149.—The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.

[The modesty which pretends to refuse praise is but in truth a desire to be praised more highly. Edition 1665.]


150.—The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.


151.—It is easier to govern others than to prevent being governed.


152.—If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not hurt us.

["Adulatione servilia fingebant securi de fragilitate credentis." Tacit. Ann. xvi.]


153.—Nature makes merit but fortune sets it to work.


154.—Fortune cures us of many faults that reason could not.


155.—There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.


156.—There are persons whose only merit consists in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners.


157.—The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it.


158.—Flattery is base coin to which only our vanity gives currency.


159.—It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the management of them.


160.—However brilliant an action it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive.


161.—A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we desire to estimate the effects that they produce.


162.—The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than real brilliancy.


163.—Numberless arts appear foolish whose secre{t} motives are most wise and weighty.


164.—It is much easier to seem fitted for posts we do not fill than for those we do.


165.—Ability wins us the esteem of the true men, luck that of the people.


166.—The world oftener rewards the appearance of merit than merit itself.


167.—Avarice is more opposed to economy than to liberality.


168.—However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.

["Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die." Pope: Essay On Man, Ep. ii.]


169.—Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.

["Quod segnitia erat sapientia vocaretur." Tacitus Hist. I.]


170.—If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill.


171.—As rivers are lost in the sea so are virtues in self.


172.—If we thoroughly consider the varied effects of indifference we find we miscarry more in our duties than in our interests.


173.—There are different kinds of curiosity: one springs from interest, which makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us; another from pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of.


174.—It is far better to accustom our mind to bear the ills we have than to speculate on those which may befall us.

["Rather bear th{ose} ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of." {—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, Hamlet.}]


175.—Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which causes our heart to attach itself to all the qualities of the person we love in succession, sometimes giving the preference to one, sometimes to another. This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited to the same person.


176.—There are two kinds of constancy in love, one arising from incessantly finding in the loved one fresh objects to love, the other from regarding it as a point of honour to be constant.


177.—Perseverance is not deserving of blame or praise, as it is merely the continuance of tastes and feelings which we can neither create or destroy.


178.—What makes us like new studies is not so much the weariness we have of the old or the wish for change as the desire to be admired by those who know more than ourselves, and the hope of advantage over those who know less.


179.—We sometimes complain of the levity of our friends to justify our own by anticipation.


180.—Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us.


181.—One sort of inconstancy springs from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes from a surfeit of matter.


182.—Vices enter into the composition of virtues as poison into that of medicines. Prudence collects and blends the two and renders them useful against the ills of life.


183.—For the credit of virtue we must admit that the greatest misfortunes of men are those into which they fall through their crimes.


184.—We admit our faults to repair by our sincerity the evil we have done in the opinion of others.

[In the edition of 1665 this maxim stands as No. 200. We never admit our faults except through vanity.]


185.—There are both heroes of evil and heroes of good.

[Ut alios industria ita hunc ignavia protulerat ad famam, habebaturque non ganeo et profligator sed erudito luxu. —Tacit. Ann. xvi.]


186.—We do not despise all who have vices, but we do despise all who have not virtues.

["If individuals have no virtues their vices may be of use to us."—Junius, 5th Oct. 1771.]


187.—The name of virtue is as useful to our interest as that of vice.


188.—The health of the mind is not less uncertain than that of the body, and when passions seem furthest removed we are no less in danger of infection than of falling ill when we are well.


189.—It seems that nature has at man's birth fixed the bounds of his virtues and vices.


190.—Great men should not have great faults.


191.—We may say vices wait on us in the course of our life as the landlords with whom we successively lodge, and if we travelled the road twice over I doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.


192.—When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them.


193.—There are relapses in the diseases of the mind as in those of the body; what we call a cure is often no more than an intermission or change of disease.


194.—The defects of the mind are like the wounds of the body. Whatever care we take to heal them the scars ever remain, and there is always danger of their reopening.


195.—The reason which often prevents us abandoning a single vice is having so many.


196.—We easily forget those faults which are known only to ourselves.

[Seneca says "Innocentem quisque se dicit respiciens testem non conscientiam."]


197.—There are men of whom we can never believe evil without having seen it. Yet there are very few in whom we should be surprised to see it.


198.—We exaggerate the glory of some men to detract from that of others, and we should praise Prince CondÉ and Marshal Turenne much less if we did not want to blame them both.

[The allusion to CondÉ and Turenne gives the date at which these maxims were published in 1665. CondÉ and Turenne were after their campaign with the Imperialists at the height of their fame. It proves the truth of the remark of Tacitus, "Populus neminem sine aemulo sinit."— Tac. Ann. xiv.]


199.—The desire to appear clever often prevents our being so.


200.—Virtue would not go far did not vanity escort her.


201.—He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content with him deceives himself yet more.


202.—Falsely honest men are those who disguise their faults both to themselves and others; truly honest men are those who know them perfectly and confess them.


203.—He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.


204.—The coldness of women is a balance and burden they add to their beauty.


205.—Virtue in woman is often the love of reputation and repose.


206.—He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of good men.


207.—Folly follows us at all stages of life. If one appears wise 'tis but because his folly is proportioned to his age and fortune.


208.—There are foolish people who know and who skilfully use their folly.


209.—Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.


210.—In growing old we become more foolish—and more wise.


211.—There are people who are like farces, which are praised but for a time (however foolish and distasteful they may be).

[The last clause is added from Edition of 1665.]


212.—Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.


213.—Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.

[Junius said of the Marquis of Granby, "He was as brave as a total absence of all feeling and reflection could make him."—21st Jan. 1769.]


214.—Valour in common soldiers is a perilous method of earning their living.

["Men venture necks to gain a fortune, The soldier does it ev{'}ry day, (Eight to the week) for sixpence pay." {—Samuel Butler,} Hudibras, Part II., canto i., line 512.]


215.—Perfect bravery and sheer cowardice are two extremes rarely found. The space between them is vast, and embraces all other sorts of courage. The difference between them is not less than between faces and tempers. Men will freely expose themselves at the beginning of an action, and relax and be easily discouraged if it should last. Some are content to satisfy worldly honour, and beyond that will do little else. Some are not always equally masters of their timidity. Others allow themselves to be overcome by panic; others charge because they dare not remain at their posts. Some may be found whose courage is strengthened by small perils, which prepare them to face greater dangers. Some will dare a sword cut and flinch from a bullet; others dread bullets little and fear to fight with swords. These varied kinds of courage agree in this, that night, by increasing fear and concealing gallant or cowardly actions, allows men to spare themselves. There is even a more general discretion to be observed, for we meet with no man who does all he would have done if he were assured of getting off scot-free; so that it is certain that the fear of death does somewhat subtract from valour.

[See also "Table Talk of Napoleon," who agrees with this, so far as to say that few, but himself, had a two o'clock of the morning valour.]


216.—Perfect valour is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world.

["It is said of untrue valours that some men's valours are in the eyes of them that look on."—Bacon, Advancement Of Learning{, (1605), Book I, Section II, paragraph 5}.]


217.—Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul which raises it above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it: by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.


218.—Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

[So Massillon, in one of his sermons, "Vice pays homage to virtue in doing honour to her appearance."

So Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, says, "You have done as much mischief to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society."—28 Sept. 1771.]


219.—Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.


220.—Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.

["Vanity bids all her sons be brave and all her daughters chaste and courteous. But why do we need her instruction?"—Sterne, Sermons.]


221.—We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.


222.—Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their body, or their mind, is beginning to fail.


223.—Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.


224.—All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful.


225.—What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.

["The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned."—Junius's Letter To The King.]


226.—Too great a hurry to discharge of an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.


227.—Lucky people are bad hands at correcting their faults; they always believe that they are right when fortune backs up their vice or folly.

["The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit."—Swift, Thoughts On Various Subjects]


228.—Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.


229.—The good we have received from a man should make us excuse the wrong he does us.


230.—Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or evil without producing the like. We imitate good actions by emulation, and bad ones by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons until example liberates.


231.—It is great folly to wish only to be wise.


232.—Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them.


233.—In afflictions there are various kinds of hypocrisy. In one, under the pretext of weeping for one dear to us we bemoan ourselves; we regret her good opinion of us, we deplore the loss of our comfort, our pleasure, our consideration. Thus the dead have the credit of tears shed for the living. I affirm 'tis a kind of hypocrisy which in these afflictions deceives itself. There is another kind not so innocent because it imposes on all the world, that is the grief of those who aspire to the glory of a noble and immortal sorrow. After Time, which absorbs all, has obliterated what sorrow they had, they still obstinately obtrude their tears, their sighs their groans, they wear a solemn face, and try to persuade others by all their acts, that their grief will end only with their life. This sad and distressing vanity is commonly found in ambitious women. As their sex closes to them all paths to glory, they strive to render themselves celebrated by showing an inconsolable affliction. There is yet another kind of tears arising from but small sources, which flow easily and cease as easily. One weeps to achieve a reputation for tenderness, weeps to be pitied, weeps to be bewept, in fact one weeps to avoid the disgrace of not weeping!

["In grief the {Pleasure} is still uppermost{;} and the affliction we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain which is always odious, and which we endeavour to shake off as soon as possible."—Burke, Sublime And Beautiful{, (1756), Part I, Sect. V}.]


234.—It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.


235.—We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them.


236.—It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.


237.—No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness of will.


238.—It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most men, as to do them too much good.


239.—Nothing flatters our pride so much as the confidence of the great, because we regard it as the result of our worth, without remembering that generally 'tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret.


240.—We may say of conformity as distinguished from beauty, that it is a symmetry which knows no rules, and a secret harmony of features both one with each other and with the colour and appearance of the person.


241.—Flirtation is at the bottom of woman's nature, although all do not practise it, some being restrained by fear, others by sense.

["By nature woman is a flirt, but her flirting changes both in the mode and object according to her opinions."— Rousseau, Emile.]


242.—We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.


243.—Few things are impossible in themselves; application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.


244.—Sovereign ability consists in knowing the value of things.


245.—There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability.

["You have accomplished a great stroke in diplomacy when you have made others think that you have only very average abilities."—La BruyÈre.]


246.—What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interest.


247.—The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters.


248.—Magnanimity despises all, to win all.


249.—There is no less eloquence in the voice, in the eyes and in the air of a speaker than in his choice of words.


250.—True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that could be said.


251.—There are people whose faults become them, others whose very virtues disgrace them.

["There are faults which do him honour, and virtues that disgrace him."—Junius, Letter Of 28th May, 1770.]


252.—It is as common to change one's tastes, as it is uncommon to change one's inclinations.


253.—Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and vices.


254.—Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant others. It is one of the devices of Pride to lower us to raise us; and truly pride transforms itself in a thousand ways, and is never so well disguised and more able to deceive than when it hides itself under the form of humility.

["Grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for business."—Junius, Letter To The Duke Of Grafton.

"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And the devil was pleased, for his darling sin Is the pride that apes humility." Southey, Devil's Walk.]

{There are numerous corrections necessary for this quotation; I will keep the original above so you can compare the correct passages:

"He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And he owned with a grin, That his favourite sin Is pride that apes humility." —Southey, Devil's Walk, Stanza 8.

"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility." —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts}


255.—All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice, gestures and looks, and this harmony, as it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, makes people agreeable or disagreeable.


256.—In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.

["All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."—Shakespeare, As You Like It{, Act II, Scene VII, Jaques}.

"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last."—Junius.]


257.—Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal the want of mind.

["Gravity is the very essence of imposture."—Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 11, vol. I. "The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it—a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind."—Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol. I., chap. ii.]


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.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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