Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims Part 18

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 friendship is rarer.

["It is more common to see perfect love than real friendship."--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.

481.--Nothing is rarer than true good nature, those who think they have it are generally only pliant or weak.

482.--The mind attaches itself by idleness and habit to whatever is easy or pleasant. This habit always places bounds to our knowledge, and no one has ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his mind to the full extent of its capacities.

483.--Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.

484.--When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a pa.s.sion it is p.r.o.ner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.

485.--Those who have had great pa.s.sions often find all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.

486.--More persons exist without self-love than without envy.

["I do not believe that there is a human creature in his senses arrived at maturity, that at some time or other has not been carried away by this pa.s.sion (envy) in good earnest, and yet I never met with any who dared own he was guilty of it, but in jest."--Mandeville: Fable Of The Bees; Remark N.]

487.--We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.

488.--The calm or disturbance of our mind does not depend so much on what we regard as the more important things of life, as in a judicious or injudicious arrangement of the little things of daily occurrence.

489.--However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

490.--We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from ambition to love.

["Men commence by love, finish by ambition, and do not find a quieter seat while they remain there."--La Bruyere: Du Coeur.]

491.--Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no pa.s.sion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.

492.--Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations, others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.

[Aime Martin says, "The author here confuses greediness, the desire and avarice--pa.s.sions which probably have a common origin, but produce different results. The greedy man is nearly always desirous to possess, and often foregoes great future advantages for small present interests.

The avaricious man, on the other hand, mistakes present advantages for the great expectations of the future. Both desire to possess and enjoy. But the miser possesses and enjoys nothing but the pleasure of possessing; he risks nothing, gives nothing, hopes nothing, his life is centred in his strong box, beyond that he has no want."]

493.--It appears that men do not find they have enough faults, as they increase the number by certain peculiar qualities that they affect to a.s.sume, and which they cultivate with so great a.s.siduity that at length they become natural faults, which they can no longer correct.