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النشر الإلكتروني

What can a bow-though faultless as to the cane-if it be stringless, effect?

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.

Let not a man, thinking of destiny, relinquish his own exertion. Without exertion he is not able to obtain oil from sesamum-seeds (which contain it in abundance).

If persons attach themselves to what is bad, they become themselves vitiated. Rivers, as they rise, have their waters sweet; but having reached the sea, they are no longer drinkable.

The great cry with everybody is, Get on! get on just as if the world were travelling post. How astonished the people will be, when they arrive in heaven, to find the angels, who are so much wiser than they, laying no schemes to be made archangels!

The wisdom of the ancients, as to the government of life, was no more than certain precepts what to do, and what not; and men were much better in that simplicity; for, as they came to be more learned, they grew less careful of being good.

That plain and open virtue is now turned into a dark and intricate science; and we are taught to dispute, rather than to live.

The Lacedæmonians applied their minds to no learning but what was useful; and would not suffer the professors of any speculative sciences to live in their government, lest by their disputations, and empty notions, they should deprave the true excellency of virtue.

It is a mistake to think, that a large system of ethics, dissected according to the nice prescriptions of logic, and methodically replenished with definitions, divisions, distinctions, and syllogisms, is requisite or sufficient to make men virtuous. The actual possession of one virtue is preferable to the bare speculative knowledge of all arts and sciences together.

Knowledge will not be acquired without pains and application. It is troublesome and deep digging for pure waters; but when once you come to the spring, they rise up, and meet you.

Learning is preferable to riches, and virtue to both.

There is nothing good, or evil, but virtue or vice. What is that knowledge good for, which does not direct and govern our lives?

Useful knowledge can have no enemies, except the ignorant; it cherishes youth, delights the aged, is an ornament in prosperity, and yields comfort in adversity.

Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and beasts by nature.

We know little of the causes of things, but may see wisdom enough in every thing: and could we be content to spend as much time in contemplating the wise ends of providence, as we do in searching into causes, it would certainly make us better men, and not worse philosophers.

Were matters so managed, that men turned thei. speculation into practice, and took care to apply their reading to the purposes of human life; the advantage of learning would be unspeakable; and we see how illustriously such persons shine in the world and therefore nothing can be said to the

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prejudice of learning in general, but only to such a false opinion of it, as depends upon this alone for the most eligible, and only qualification of the mind of man; and so rests upon it, and buries it in inactivity.

Contentment excludes all murmuring and repining at the allotments of Providence; all solicitude and anxious thoughts about future events, farther than such precautions as are within the sphere of human prudence.

Prosperity is not without its troubles, nor adversity without its comforts.

There is scarce any lot so low, but there is something in it to satisfy the man whom it has befallen; Providence having so ordered things, that in every man's cup, how bitter soever, there are some cordial drops, which, if wisely extracted, are sufficient to make him contented.

Contentment is only to be found within ourselves. A man that is content with a little, has enough; he that complains, has too much.

If we will create imaginary wants to ourselves, why do we not create imaginary satisfaction to them? It were the merrier phrensy of the two to be like the Athenian, who fancied all the ships that came into the harbour, were his own.

Socrates rightly said of contentment, opposing it to the riches of fortune and opinion, that it is the wealth of nature; for it gives every thing that we want, and really need.

Prosperity has always been the cause of far greater evils to men, than adversity and it is easier for a man to bear this patiently, than not to forget himself in the other.

Proud men never have friends; neither in prosperity, because they know nobody: nor in adversity, because then nobody knows them.

He who thinks no man above him but for his virtue, none below him but for his vice, can never be obsequious or assuming in a wrong place.

Adversity does not take from us our true friends; it only disperses those who pretended to be such.

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