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Men are grateful in the same degree, that they are resentful.

Youg men are subtle arguers: the cloke 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 out-living 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 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.

Difference 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 under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favour..

The difference there is between 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 falsehoods appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

Virtue should be considered a part of taste; and we should as much avoid deceit, or sinister' meanings in discourse, as we would puns, back language, or false grammar.

CHAP. VII

DEFERENC EFERENCE is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compli

ments.

He that lies in bed all a summer's morning, loses the chief pleasure of the day: he that gives his youth to indolence, undergoes a loss of the same kind.

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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 a 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 who 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 picking at.

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The eye of the 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 har

mony.

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 remove.

Honour is but a fictitious kind of honesty ; a mean but a 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 the 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 ?

CHAP. VIII

WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble

in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages prince's palaces. He is a good divine who follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done,

than be one of the twenty to follow teaching.

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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.

How far the little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. Love all, trust a few

Do wrong to none be able for thine enemy Rather in power than in use: keep thy friend Under thine own life's key be check'd for silence, But never task'd for speech.

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve; And, like the baseless fabric of a vision Leave not a wreck behind! we are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us,

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.

The poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to

heaven

And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the poet's pen

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