Chapter III: Section II: , paragraph 5}

217.--Intrepidity is an extraordinary strength of soul which raises it above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the sight of great perils can arouse in it: by this strength heroes maintain a calm aspect and preserve their reason and liberty in the most surprising and terrible accidents.

218.--Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

[So Massillon, in one of his sermons, "Vice pays homage to virtue in doing honour to her appearance."

So Junius, writing to the Duke of Grafton, says, "You have done as much mischief to the community as Machiavel, if Machiavel had not known that an appearance of morals and religion are useful in society."--28 Sept. 1771.]

219.--Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.

220.--Vanity, shame, and above all disposition, often make men brave and women chaste.

["Vanity bids all her sons be brave and all her daughters chaste and courteous. But why do we need her instruction?"--Sterne, Sermons.]

221.--We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.

222.--Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their body, or their mind, is beginning to fail.

223.--Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.

224.--All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful.

225.--What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.

["The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned."--Junius's Letter To The King.]

226.--Too great a hurry to discharge of an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

227.--Lucky people are bad hands at correcting their faults; they always believe that they are right when fortune backs up their vice or folly.

["The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit."--Swift, Thoughts On Various Subjects]

228.--Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.

229.--The good we have received from a man should make us excuse the wrong he does us.

230.--Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or evil without producing the like. We imitate good actions by emulation, and bad ones by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons until example liberates.

231.--It is great folly to wish only to be wise.

232.--Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them.

233.--In afflictions there are various kinds of hypocrisy. In one, under the pretext of weeping for one dear to us we bemoan ourselves; we regret her good opinion of us, we deplore the loss of our comfort, our pleasure, our consideration. Thus the dead have the credit of tears shed for the living. I affirm 'tis a kind of hypocrisy which in these afflictions deceives itself. There is another kind not so innocent because it imposes on all the world, that is the grief of those who aspire to the glory of a noble and immortal sorrow. After Time, which absorbs all, has obliterated what sorrow they had, they still obstinately obtrude their tears, their sighs their groans, they wear a solemn face, and try to persuade others by all their acts, that their grief will end only with their life. This sad and distressing vanity is commonly found in ambitious women. As their sex closes to them all paths to glory, they strive to render themselves celebrated by showing an inconsolable affliction. There is yet another kind of tears arising from but small sources, which flow easily and cease as easily. One weeps to achieve a reputation for tenderness, weeps to be pitied, weeps to be bewept, in fact one weeps to avoid the disgrace of not weeping!

["In grief the {Pleasure} is still uppermost{;} and the affliction we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain which is always odious, and which we endeavour to shake off as soon as possible."--Burke, Sublime And Beautiful{, (1756), Part I, Sect. V}.]

234.--It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.

235.--We are easily consoled at the misfortunes of our friends when they enable us to prove our tenderness for them.

236.--It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.

237.--No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness of will.

238.--It is not so dangerous to do wrong to most men, as to do them too much good.

239.--Nothing flatters our pride so much as the confidence of the great, because we regard it as the result of our worth, without remembering that generally 'tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret.

240.--We may say of conformity as distinguished from beauty, that it is a symmetry which knows no rules, and a secret harmony of features both one with each other and with the colour and appearance of the person.

241.--Flirtation is at the bottom of woman's nature, although all do not practise it, some being restrained by fear, others by sense.

["By nature woman is a flirt, but her flirting changes both in the mode and object according to her opinions."-- Rousseau, Emile.]

242.--We often bore others when we think we cannot possibly bore them.

243.--Few things are impossible in themselves; application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.

244.--Sovereign ability consists in knowing the value of things.

245.--There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability.

["You have accomplished a great stroke in diplomacy when you have made others think that you have only very average abilities."--La Bruyere.]

246.--What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interest.

247.--The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters.

248.--Magnanimity despises all, to win all.

249.--There is no less eloquence in the voice, in the eyes and in the air of a speaker than in his choice of words.

250.--True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that could be said.

251.--There are people whose faults become them, others whose very virtues disgrace them.

["There are faults which do him honour, and virtues that disgrace him."--Junius, Letter Of 28th May, 1770.]

252.--It is as common to change one's tastes, as it is uncommon to change one's inclinations.

253.--Interest sets at work all sorts of virtues and vices.

254.--Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant others. It is one of the devices of Pride to lower us to raise us; and truly pride transforms itself in a thousand ways, and is never so well disguised and more able to deceive than when it hides itself under the form of humility.

["Grave and plausible enough to be thought fit for business."--Junius, Letter To The Duke Of Grafton.

"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And the devil was pleased, for his darling sin Is the pride that apes humility." Southey, Devil's Walk.]

{There are numerous corrections necessary for this quotation; I will keep the original above so you can compare the correct passages:

"He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility, And he owned with a grin, That his favourite sin Is pride that apes humility." --Southey, Devil's Walk, Stanza 8.

"And the devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts}

255.--All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice, gestures and looks, and this harmony, as it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, makes people agreeable or disagreeable.

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 passion 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 passion 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 anticipation.

["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is called compassion."--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 passions 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 passions 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{,