There are many proprieties and diversities of vice; but it is one never-failing effect of it to live
displeased.
We must keep on our course, if we would gain our journey's end. "He that cannot live happily
anywhere, will live happily nowhere.
Will any man ask upon the road, Pray, which is the way to prudence, to justice, to temperance, to
fortitude?
We divide our lives betwixt a dislike of the present and a desire of the future: but he that lives as
he should, orders himself so, as neither to fear nor to wish for tomorrow; if it comes, it is welcome;
but if not, there is nothing lost; for that which is come, is but the same over again with what is
past.
One sovereign remedy against all misfortunes is constancy of mind: ....
To secure ourselves in this world, first, we must aim at nothing that men count worth the wrangling
for. Secondly, we must not value possession of any thing which even a common thief would think
worthy of stealing. A man's body is no booty. Let the way be never so dangerous for robberies,
the poor and the naked pass quietly. A plain dealing sincerity of manners makes a man's life
happy, even in despite of scorn and contempt, which is every clear man's fate. But we had better
yet be contemned for simplicity than lie perpetually upon the torture of counterfeit; provided that
care be tkaen not to confound simplicity with negligence:....
X
Never pronounce any man happy that depends upon fortune for his happiness; for nothing can be
more preposterous than to place the good of a reasonable creature in unreasonable things. If I
have lost anything it was adventitious; and the less money, the less trouble; the less favour, the less
envy; nay, even in those cases that put us out of their wits, it is not the loss itself, but the opinion of
the loss, that troubles us.
I will hope the best, and prepare for the worst.
That which we call our own is but lent us; and what we have received gratis we must return
without complaint.
[Fortune] throws out baits for us, and sets traps as we do for birds and beasts; her bounties are
snares and lime-twigs to us; we think that we take, but we are taken. If they had anything in them
that were substantial, they would some time or other fill and quiet us; but they serve only to
provoke our appetite without anything more than pomp and show to allay it.
To weep, lament, and groan, is to renounce our duty; and it is the same weakness on the other
side to exult and rejoice. I would rather make my fortune than expect; being neither depressed
with her injuries, nor dazzled with her favours.
When we see any man banished, beggared, tortured, we are to account, that though the mischief
feel upon another, it was levelled at us.
This we may conclude upon, that her empire is but imaginary, and that whosoever serves her,
makes himself a voluntary slave; for "the things that are often contemned by the inconsiderate and
always by the wise, are in themsleves neither good nor evil:" as pleasure and pains; prosperity and
adversity; which can only operate upon our outward condition, without any proper and necessary
effect upon the mind.
XI
{Regarding the pleasures of the palates.] Their felicities are full of disquiet, and neither sincere nor
well grounded: but they have need of one pleasure to support another; and of new prayers to
forgive the errors of their former.
Our forefathers (by the force of whose virtues we are now supported in our vices) lived every jot
as well as we, when they provided and dressed their own meat with their own hands; lodged
upon the ground, and were not as yet come to the vanity of gold and gems; when they swore by
their earthen gods, and kept their oath, though they died for it.
...it is the mind and not the sum, that makes any man rich...
If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than me; but himan felicity is lodged in the soul,
not in the flesh. They that deliver themselves up to luxury are still either tormented with too little,
or oppressed with too much; and equally miserable, by being either deserted or
overwhelmed!
It is an ill thing for a man not to know the measure of his stomach, nor to consider that amen do
many things in their drink that they are ashamed of sober; drunkenness being nothing else but
voluntary insanity.
It is an argument of clownery, to do as other people do. Luxury steals upon us by degrees; first, it
shows itself in a more than ordinary care of our bodies, it slips next into the furniture of our
houses; and it gets then into the fabric, curiosity, and expense of our tables.
Thevery earth is burdened with our buildings; not a river, not a mountain, escapes us. Oh, that
there should be such boundless desires in our little bodies? Would not fewer lodgings serves us?
We lie but in one, and where we are not, that is not properly ours.
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but
the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures. We do not eat to satisfy
hunger, but ambition; we are dead while we are alive, and our houses are so much our tombs, that
a man might write our epitaphs upon our doors.
XII
The man that would be truly ruch must not increase his fortune, vut retrench his appetites: for
riches are not only superfluous, but mean, and little more to the possessor than to the looker-
on.
There is nothing out own but that which we give ourselves, and of which we have a certain and an
inexpignable possession. Avarice is so insatiable, that is not in the power of liberality to content it;
and our desires are so boundless, that whatever we get is but in the way to getting more without
end: and so long as we are solicitous for the increase of wealth, we lose the true use of it; and
spend our time in putting out, calling in, and passing our accounts, without any subsatntial benefit,
either to the world or to ourselves.
It is remarkable, that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron,
gold, and silver, (being both the instrument of blood and slaughter, and the price of it) Nature has
hidden in the bowels of the earth.
For money is greater torment in the possession than it is in the pursuit.
We are honest, so long as we may thrive upon it; but if the devil himself give better wages, we
change our party.
Every man wants as much as he covets; and it is lost labor to pour into a vessel that will never be
full.
...the way that leads to honor and riches leads to troubles; and we find the causes of our sorrows
in the very objects of our delights.
These short and false pleasures deceive us; and, like drunkenness, revenge the jolly madness of
one hour with the naseous and sad repentance of many.
I will never envy those that the people call and happy. A sound mind is not to be shaken with a
popular and cain applause; nor is it in the power of their pride to disturb the state of our
happiness.
It is a rare thing for a man in great fortune to lay down his happiness gently; it being a common fate
for a man to sink under the weight of those felicites that raise him.
XIII
No man can be said to be perfectly happy that runs the risk of disappointment; which is the case
of every man that fears or hopes for anything.
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