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Some people will never learn any thing, for this reason, because they understand every thing too foon.

There is nothing wanting to make all rational and difinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they fhould talk together every day.

Men are grateful in the fame degree that they are refentful.

Young men are fubtle arguers: the cloke of honour covers all their faults, as that of paffion all their follies. Economy is no difgrace; it is better living on a little, than out-living a great deal.

Next to the fatisfaction I receive in the profperity of an honeft man, I am best pleased with the confusion of a rafcal.

What is often termed fhinefs, is nothing more than refined fenfe, and an indifference to common observations. The higher character a person supports, the more he hould regard his minutest actions.

Every person infenfibly fixes upon fome degree of refinement in his difcourfe, fome measure of thought which he thinks worth exhibiting. It is wife to fix this pretty high, although it occasions one to talk the lefs.

To endeavour all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philofophy, is to spend fo much in armour, that one has nothing left to defend.

Deference often fhrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the fenfative plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

Men are fometimes accused of pride, merely because their accufers would be proud themselves if they were in their places.

People frequently use this expreffion, I am inclined to think fo and fo; not confidering that they are then speaking the most literal of all truths.

Modefty makes large amends for the pain it gives the perfons who labour under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy perfon in their favour.

The difference there is betwixt honour and honefty 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 falfehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

Virtue should be confidered as a part of tafte; and we fhould as much avoid deceit, or finifter meanings in difcourse, as we would puns, bad language, or falfe grammar.

CHAPTER VII.

DEFERENCE is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments,

He that lies in bed all a fummer's morning, lofes the chief pleasure of the day: he that gives up his youth to indolence, undergoes a lofs of the same kind.

Shining characters are not always the most agreeable

ones.

The mild radiance of an emerald, is by no means lefs pleafing than the glare of a ruby.

To be at once a rake, and to glory in the character, discovers at the fame time a bad difpofition, and a bad tafte:

How is it poffible 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 ftrength. It is in men as in foils, where fometimes there is a vein of gold that the owner knows not of.

Fine fenfe and exalted fenfe are not half fo valuable as common fenfe. There are forty men of wit for one man

of fenfe: and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a lofs for want of ready change.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world, in fkilful hands; in unfkilful, 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 wifer to-day than he was yesterday.

Whenever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generofity if he were a rich man.

Flowers of rhetoric in fermons or ferious difcourfes, are like the blue and red flowers in corn, pleasing to those who come only for amufement, but prejudicial to him who would reap the profit.

It often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been moft injured by flanderers; as we ufually find that to be the sweetest fruit, which the birds have been picking at.

The eye of the critic is often like a microscope, made fo very fine and nice, that it discovers the atoms, grains, and minuteft particles, without ever comprehending the whole, comparing the parts, or seeing all at once the harmony.

Men's zeal for religion is much of the fame kind as that which they fhew for a foot-ball: whenever it is contefted for, every one is ready to venture their lives and limbs in the difpute; but when that is once at an end, it is no more thought on, but fleeps 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 focieties who have none : it is a fort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the sterling cash of true morality and religion.

Perfons of great delicacy fhould know the certainty of the following truth: there are abundance of cafes which occafion fufpenfe, in which whatever they determine, they will repent of the determination; and this through a propentity of human nature to fancy happiness in those fchemes which it does not pursue.

The chief advantage that antient writers can boast over modern ones, feems owing to fimplicity. Every neble truth and fentiment was expreffed by the former in a natural manner, in a word and phrase fimple, perfpicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ?

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how exprefs and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehenfion how like a god!

If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. He is a good divine who follows his own inftructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

The fenfe of death is moft in apprehenfion; And the poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporeal fufferance, feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

How far the little candle throws his beams!
So fhines a good deed in a naughty world.

-Love all, truft 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 filence,
But never task'd for speech.

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The folemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherits fhall dissolve;
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leave not a wreck behind! we are fuch stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a fleep.

Our indifcretion fometimes ferves us well,

When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us
There's a divinity that fhapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy 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
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

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