Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims Part 12

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 n.o.ble 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.

[Domitia.n.u.s 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 grat.i.tude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.

[Hence the common proverb "Grat.i.tude is merely a lively sense of favors to come."]

299.--Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many people show grat.i.tude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not show ingrat.i.tude 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.