Part 18 (1/2)

465.--Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the same protection as crime.

466.--Of all the violent pa.s.sions the one that becomes a woman best is love.

467.--Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.

468.--Some bad qualities form great talents.

469.--We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason.

470.--All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful, both the good as well as the bad, and nearly all are creatures of opportunities.

471.--In their first pa.s.sion women love their lovers, in all the others they love love.

[”In her first pa.s.sion woman loves her lover, In all her others what she loves is love.” {--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, Canto iii., stanza 3. ”We truly love once, the first time; the subsequent pa.s.sions are more or less involuntary.” La Bruyere: Du Coeur.]

472.--Pride as the other pa.s.sions has its follies. We are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume ourselves in having been and being able to be so.

473.--However rare true love is, true friends.h.i.+p is rarer.

[”It is more common to see perfect love than real friends.h.i.+p.”--La Bruyere. Du Coeur.]

474.--There are few women whose charm survives their beauty.

475.--The desire to be pitied or to be admired often forms the greater part of our confidence.

476.--Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

477.--The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to make our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by pa.s.sions are seldom really possessed of any.

478.--Fancy does not enable us to invent so many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.

479.--It is only people who possess firmness who can possess true gentleness. In those who appear gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily converted into harshness.

480.--Timidity is a fault which is dangerous to blame in those we desire to cure of it.