1406. It is virtue only that repels fear and fear, only that makes life troublesome.

1407. There can be no peace in human life, without the contempt of all events. He that troubles his head with drawing confequences from mere contingencies, shall never be at reft.

1408. We could willingly change fortune and riches with many; but there are few, who would be any of those men in every circumstance.

1409. It were no virtue to bear calamities, if we did not feel them.

1410. Divine providence always places the remedy near the evil. There is not any duty, to which providence has not annexed a bleffing; nor any affliction, for which virtue has not provided a remedy.

1411. A contented mind, and a good confcience, will make a man happy in all conditions. He knows not how to fear, who dares to die.

1412. When faith, temperance, the graces, and other celestial powers, left the earth (fays one of the ancients) hope was the only goddess that ftaid behind.

1413. The expectation of future happiness is the best relief of anxious thoughts, the most perfect cure of melancholy, the guide of life, and the comfort of death.

1414. Hopes and cares, anger and fears, divide our life: Would you be free from these anxieties? Think every day will be your last, and then the fucceeding hours will be the more welcome, because unexpected.

1415. There is but one way of fortifying the foul against all gloomy prefages, and terrors of mind; and that

is, by fecuring to ourselves the friendship and protection of that being, who difpofes of events, and governs futurity. 1416. The utmost perfection we are capable of in this world, is to govern our lives and actions by the rules which nature hath fet us, and keeping the order of our creation.

1417. He is the wife man, who, though not skilled in fcience, yet knows how to govern his paffions and affections. Our paffions are our infirmities. He that can make a facrifice of his will, is lord of himself.

1418. Phyfick hath not more remedies against the difeases of the body, than reafon hath prefervatives against the paffions of the mind.

1419. Excefs of forrow is as foolish as profuse laughter. Loud mirth, or immoderate forrow, inequality of behaviour, either in prosperity or adversity, are alike ungraceful in a man that is born to die.

1420. Nothing alleviates grief fo much as the liberty of complaining: Nothing makes one more fenfible of joy, than the delight of expreffing it.

1421. Philofophy and religion fhew themselves in no one instance so much, as in the preferving our minds firm and fteddy.

1422. To be covetous of applaufe, difcovers a flender merit; and self-conceit is the ordinary attendant of ig

norance.

1423. Every man's vanity ought to be his greatest fhame, and every man's folly ought to be his greatest fecret.

1424. There are a thousand fops made by art, for one fool by nature.

1425. It is to affectation the world owes its whole race of coxcombs; nature in her whole drama never drew fuch a part; fhe has fometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.

1426. The obfervation that no man is ridiculous for being what he is, but only in the affectation of being fomething more, is equally true in regard to the mind and the body.

1427. Socrates had fo little esteem of himself, that he thought he knew nothing certainly, but that he knew nothing.

1428. The vanity of human life is like a river, conftantly paffing away, and yet conftantly coming on.

1429. It is the infirmity of poor fpirits to be taken with every appearance, and dazzled with every thing that fparkles: But great genius's have but little admiration, because few things appear new to them.

1430. A wife man endeavours to fhine in himself, a fool to outfhine others: The firft is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities, the laft is lifted up by the discovery of those which he observes in others. The wife man confiders what he wants, and the fool what he abounds in. The wife man is happy when he gains his own approbation, and the fool when he recommends himfelf to the applaufe of those about him.

1431. Rectitude of will is a greater ornament and perfection, than brightness of understanding; and to be di

vinely

vinely good, more valuable than any other wisdom and knowledge.

1432. Aristippus faid, That the only fruit he had received from his philofophy, was to speak plainly to all the world, and to tell freely his thoughts of things.

1433. To preserve the entire liberty of one's judgment, without being prepoffeffed with false reason, or pretended authority, is a strength of mind whereof few are capable.

1434. Fine fenfe, and exalted fenfe, are not half fo useful as common sense.

1535. A fincere confeffion of our ignorance, is one of the fairest and fureft teftimonies of our judgment.

1436. What is the whole creation, but one great library; every volume in which, and every page in these volumes, are impreffed with radiant characters of infinite wisdom; and all the perfections of the universe are contracted with such inimitable art in man, that he needs no other book but himself, to make him a complete philofopher.

1437. There is no end of books; our libraries are furnished for fight and oftentation, rather than use; the very indexes are not to be read over in an age; and in this multitude, how great a part of them are either dangerous, or not worth the reading. A few books well chofen, and well made use of, will be more profitable, than a great confused Alexandrian library.

1438. Lycurgus remarked, That fubtle fpeculations, and all the refinements of science, ferved to spoil the understanding, and corrupt the heart; for which reason he made little account of them,

J439. Most

1439. Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that were of no ufe; but puzzle their thoughts, and lose themselves in those vaft depths and abyffes, which no human understanding can fathom.

1440. It is a filly conceit, that men without languages are also without understanding. It is apparent in all ages, that fome fuch have been even prodigies for ability; for it is not to be believed, that wisdom fpeaks to her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

1441. There is no neceffity of being led through the feveral fields of knowledge; it will be fufficient to gather fome of the fairest fruit from them all, and fo lay up a ftore of good sense, sound reason, and folid virtue.

1442. We read of a philofopher, who declared of himself, that the first year he entered upon the study of philofophy, he knew all things; the second year he knew fomething; but the third year nothing: the more he studied, the more he declined in the opinion of his own knowledge, and faw more of the fhortnefs of his underftanding.

1443. The curiofity of feeing into every thing, explaining every thing, and adjusting it to our weak ideas, is the most dangerous disease of the human mind.

1444. Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the beft. Socrates was esteemed the wifeft man of his time, because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatnefs.

1445. One philofopher is worth a thousand grammarians. Good fenfe and reafon ought to be the umpire of all rules, both antient and modern.

1446. Too