Part 20 (1/2)

XXV.--Sobriety is the love of health, or an incapacity to eat much.

(1665, No. 135.)

XXVI.--We never forget things so well as when we are tired of talking of them. (1665, No. 144.)

XXVII.--The praise bestowed upon us is at least useful in rooting us in the practice of virtue. (1665, No. 155.)

XXVIII.--Self-love takes care to prevent him whom we flatter from being him who most flatters us. (1665, No. 157.)

XXIX.--Men only blame vice and praise virtue from interest. (1665, No.

151.)

x.x.x.--We make no difference in the kinds of anger, although there is that which is light and almost innocent, which arises from warmth of complexion, temperament, and another very criminal, which is, to speak properly, the fury of pride. (1665, No. 159.)

x.x.xI.--Great souls are not those who have fewer pa.s.sions and more virtues than the common, but those only who have greater designs. (1665, No. 161.)

x.x.xII.--Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they make them bear what value they will, and one is forced to receive them according to their currency value, and not at their true worth. (1665, No. 165.)

[See Burns{, For A' That An A' That}-- ”The rank is but the guinea's stamp, {The} man's {the gowd} for a' that.” Also Farquhar and other parallel pa.s.sages pointed out in Familiar Words.]

x.x.xIII.--Natural ferocity makes fewer people cruel than self-love.

(1665, No. 174.)

x.x.xIV.--One may say of all our virtues as an Italian poet says of the propriety of women, that it is often merely the art of appearing chaste.

(1665, No. 176.)

x.x.xV.--There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious by their brilliancy,* their number, or their excess; thus it happens that public robbery is called financial skill, and the unjust capture of provinces is called a conquest. (1665, No. 192.)

*Some crimes may be excused by their brilliancy, such as those of Jael, of Deborah, of Brutus, and of Charlotte Corday--further than this the maxim is satire.

x.x.xVI.--One never finds in man good or evil in excess. (1665, No. 201.)

x.x.xVII.--Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not easily suspect others. (1665, No. {2}08.)

{The text incorrectly numbers this maxim as 508. It is 208.}

x.x.xVIII.--The pomp of funerals concerns rather the vanity of the living, than the honour of the dead. (1665, No. 213.)

x.x.xIX.--Whatever variety and change appears in the world, we may remark a secret chain, and a regulated order of all time by Providence, which makes everything follow in due rank and fall into its destined course.

(1665, No. 225.)

XL.--Intrepidity should sustain the heart in conspiracies in place of valour which alone furnishes all the firmness which is necessary for the perils of war. (1665, No. 231.)

XLI.--Those who wish to define victory by her birth will be tempted to imitate the poets, and to call her the Daughter of Heaven, since they cannot find her origin on earth. Truly she is produced from an infinity of actions, which instead of wis.h.i.+ng to beget her, only look to the particular interests of their masters, since all those who compose an army, in aiming at their own rise and glory, produce a good so great and general. (1665, No. 232.)

XLII.--That man who has never been in danger cannot answer for his courage. (1665, No. 236.)

XLIII.--We more often place bounds on our grat.i.tude than on our desires and our hopes. (1665, No. 241.)

XLIV.--Imitation is always unhappy, for all which is counterfeit displeases by the very things which charm us when they are original (Naturelles). (1665, No. 245.)