Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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 Bruyere.]
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