63 We think very few people sensible except those who are of our opinion.

64 The generality of young people fancy that they arenatural, when they are only ill-bred and coarse.

65 Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range.

66 What renders the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own.

67 We have not courage to say, as a general proposition, that we have no faults, and our enemies no good qualities; but, in detail, we are not far from thinking so.

68

Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire of appearing so.

69 The calm or agitation of our temper does not depend so much on the important events of life, as on an agreeable or disagreeable adjustment of little things which happen every day.

70 It is a proof of very little friendship not to notice a cooling in that of our friends.

71

parts.

There are no fools so distressing as those that have

72 The most disinterested friendship is only a relation wherein our self-love contemplates some gain.

24

WE

REFLECTIONS AND MAXIMS1

Vauvenargues

E should be more tolerant of the ideas contained in a piece of writing if we conceived them in the same way as their author.

2 Rapid fortunes of any kind are the least solid, because they are rarely the result of merit. The perfect but laborious outcome of prudence is always of tardy growth.

3 It is proof of a narrow mind to distinguish things worthy of esteem from things worthy of love. Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem.

4 The law of the mind is not different from that of the body, which can only be supported by continual nourishment.

5 Those who laugh at serious tastes have a serious affection for trifles.

6 Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road of error.

7 It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has made nothing equal; her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.

8 Great resources of mind and heart are needed to enjoy sincerity when it wounds, or to practice it without giving

1 Selected. The translation is-substantially-that of Elizabeth Lee, and is reprinted with the permission of Constable and Company, Limited.

offense: few men have depth enough to hear or to tell the truth.

9 Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.

ΙΟ We are too inattentive or too much occupied with ourselves to understand each other. Whoever has seen masks at a ball dance amicably together, and hold hands without knowing each other, to part the moment after to see each other no more, nor to regret each other, can form some idea of society.

II

When we are convinced of some great truth, and feel our conviction keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

12 If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound and deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.

13 The best things are the most common. You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

14 We are not always as unjust to our enemies as we are to our relations.

15 One does not gain much by mere cleverness.

HAPPINESS is to feel that one's soul is good; there is no

other, in truth, and this kind of happiness may exist even in sorrow, so that there are griefs preferable to every joy, and such as would be preferred by all those who have felt them.

2 One is not obliged to be a servant of society, if one serves it as a model.

3 How many things one says spontaneously in conversation that would never occur to one who aimed only at knowing a subject without discussing it! The mind warms up, and its heat produces things that we should never get from its light alone.

4 To the liberal ideas of our age we must oppose the moral ideas of the ages.2

5 We are forever craving new books, and yet in those we have long possessed there are priceless treasures of wisdom and of beauty that are lost to us because of our neglect. The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

1 Selected. The "Thoughts" numbered 8-12, inclusive, are quoted from Matthew Arnold's essay on Joubert; those numbered 13-17, inclusive, from the chapter on Joubert in Irving Babbitt's Masters of Modern French Criticism. The latter are reprinted with the consent of Mr. Babbitt, and by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

2 Compare Goethe's saying, that we should endeavor to oppose to the aberrations of the hour the masses of universal history.

6 Our ancestors judged books by the standards of taste, conscience, and reason. We judge them by the emotions they inspire. Can this book help us or hurt us? Is it fitted to perfect or to corrupt our minds? Will it do us good or

harm? These are the great questions which they asked. We ask: Will it amuse us?

7 There has never been an age in literature whose ruling taste was not diseased. The success of great writers consists in rendering palatable to sickly tastes works that are sound and sane.

8 It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold of the reader and gets possession of him. It is by means of these that great thoughts get currency and pass for true metal, like gold and silver which have had a recognized stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in the man who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly perceived, uses them; for people feel that such an employment of the language of common human life betokens a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who keeps himself in contact with them. Besides, these words make a style frank and easy. They show that an author has long made the thought or the feeling expressed his mental food; that he has so assimilated them and familiarized them, that the most common expressions suffice him in order to express ideas which have become everyday ideas to him by the length of time they have been in his mind. And lastly, what one says in such words looks more true; for, of all the words in use, .none are so clear as those which we call common words; and clearness is so eminently one of the characteristics of truth, that often it even passes for truth itself.

9 With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the passions, the weakness of the spirit; with the storms of the