Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims Part 11

256.--In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.

["All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."--Shakespeare, As You Like It{, Act II, Scene VII, Jaques}.

"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last."--Junius.]

257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal the want of mind.

["Gravity is the very essence of imposture."--Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 11, vol. I. "The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind."--Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol. I., chap. ii.]

258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than wit.

259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the pa.s.sion we feel than in that we inspire.

260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed polite.

261.--The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.

262.--There is no pa.s.sion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.

263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which we like more than that we give away.

264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others.

It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We help others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these services which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves by antic.i.p.ation.

["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is called compa.s.sion."--Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]

265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see.

["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong." Dryden, Absalom And Achitophel{, line 547}.]

266.--We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent pa.s.sions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both pa.s.sions and virtues.

267.--A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.

268.--We credit judges with the meanest motives, and yet we desire our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us--and yet 'tis only to make these men decide in our favour that we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life.

269.--No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

270.--One honour won is a surety for more.

271.--Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.

["The best of life is but intoxication."--{Lord Byron, } Don Juan{, Canto II, stanza 179}. In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes with--"it is the fever of health, the folly of reason."]

272.--Nothing should so humiliate men who have deserved great praise, as the care they have taken to acquire it by the smallest means.

273.--There are persons of whom the world approves who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the affairs of life.

274.--The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower to the fruit; it lends a l.u.s.tre which is easily lost, but which never returns.

275.--Natural goodness, which boasts of being so apparent, is often smothered by the least interest.

276.--Absence extinguishes small pa.s.sions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.

277.--Women often think they love when they do not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing, persuades them that they have real pa.s.sion when they have but flirtation.

["And if in fact she takes a {"}Grande Pa.s.sion{"}, It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on. Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the {Tenth} instance will be a tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do." {--Lord Byron, }Don Juan, canto xii. stanza 77.]

278.--What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

279.--When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from grat.i.tude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.

280.--The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established.

281.--Pride, which inspires, often serves to moderate envy.

282.--Some disguised lies so resemble truth, that we should judge badly were we not deceived.

283.--Sometimes there is not less ability in knowing how to use than in giving good advice.