Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 448

For every paltry sum of money there must be bonds, witnesses, counterparts, powers, etc., which is no other than a shameful confession of fraud and wickedness, when more credit is given to our seals than to our minds; and caution taken lest he that has received the money should deny it. Were it not better now to be deceived by some than to suspect all?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1233

To be angry at offenders is to make ourselves the common enemies of mankind, which is both weak and wicked; and we may as well be angry that our thistles do not bring forth apples, or that every pebble in our ground is not an oriental pearl. If we are angry both with young men and with old, because they do offend, why not with infants too, because they will offend? It is laudable to rejoice for anything that is well done; but to be transported for another man’s doing ill, is narrow and sordid.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1476

A prince should behave himself generously in the power which God has given him of life and death, especially towards those that have been at any time his equals; for the one has his revenge, and the other his punishment in it. He that stands indebted for his life has lost it; but he that receives his life at the foot of his enemy, lives to the honor of his preserver: he lives the lasting monument of his virtue; whereas, if he had been led in triumph, the spectacle would have been quickly over.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 819

Felicity is an unquiet thing; it torments itself, and puzzles the brain. It makes some people ambitious, others luxurious; it puffs up some, and softens others; only (as it is with wine) some heads bear it better than others; but it dissolves all. Greatness stands upon a precipice: and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces. It is a rare thing for a man in a great fortune to lay down his happiness gently; it being a common fate for a man to sink under the weight of those felicities that raise him. How many of the nobility did Marius bring down to herdsmen and other mean offices! Nay, in the very moment of our despising servants, we may be made so ourselves.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 570

The _astrologer_ tells me of Saturn and Mars in _opposition_; but I say, let them be as they will, their courses and their positions are ordered them by an unchangeable decree of fate. Either they produce and point out the effects of all things, or else they signify them; if the former, what are we the better for the knowledge of that which must of necessity come to pass? If the latter, what does it avail us to foresee what we cannot avoid?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1396

If a _child_, it was _ignorance_: if a _woman_, a _mistake_: if done by _command_ a _necessity_; if a _man_ be injured, it is but _quod pro quo_: if a _judge_, he _knows_ what he does: if a _prince_, I must _submit_; either if _guilty_, to _justice_, or if _innocent_, to _fortune_: if a _brute_, I make myself one by _imitating_ it: if a _calamity_ or _disease_, my best relief is _patience_: if _providence_, it is both _impious_ and _vain_ to be _angry_ at it: if a _good_ man, I will make the _best_ of it: if a _bad_, I will never _wonder_ at it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 988

It is a _long being_, but perchance a _short life_. And what is the reason of all this? We live as we should never die, and without any thought of human frailty, when yet the very moment we bestow upon this man or thing, may, peradventure, be our last. But the greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our own power; we look forward to that which depends upon Fortune; and so quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1277

No repulse discourages it, and, for want of other matter to work upon, it falls foul upon itself; and, let the ground be never so trivial, it is sufficient for the wildest outrage imaginable. It spares neither age, sex, nor quality.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 295

There are some benefits whereof a wicked man is wholly incapable; of which hereafter. There are others, which are bestowed upon him, not for his own sake, but for secondary reasons; and of these we have spoken in part already. There are, moreover, certain common offices of humanity, which are only allowed him as he is a man, and without any regard either to vice or virtue.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 430

But, what is all this to those who are so mad, and to dispute even the goodness of Heaven, which gives us all, and expects nothing again, but continues giving to the most unthankful and complaining?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 730

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 any thing, it was adventitious; and the less money, the less trouble; the less favor, 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.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1336

And every jot as ridiculous, though not so impious, was that of Cyrus; who, in his design upon Babylon, found a river in his way that put a stop to his march: the current was strong, and carried away one of the horses that belonged to his own chariot: upon this he swore, that since it had obstructed _his_ passage, it should never hinder any body’s else; and presently set his whole army to work upon it, which diverted it into a hundred and fourscore channels, and laid it dry. In this ignoble and unprofitable employment he lost his time, and the soldiers their courage, and gave his adversaries an opportunity of providing themselves, while he was waging war with a river instead of an enemy.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1007

The purest part of our life runs first, and leaves only the dregs at the bottom; and “that time which is good for nothing else, we dedicate to virtue;” and only propound to begin to live at an age that very few people arrive at. What greater folly can there be in the world than this loss of time, the future being so uncertain, and the damages so irreparable? If death be necessary, why should any man fear it? and if the time of it be uncertain, why should not we always expect it?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 8

We are fallen into an age of _vain philosophy_ (as the holy apostle calls it) and so desperately overrun with Drolls and Sceptics, that there is hardly any thing so certain or so sacred, that is not exposed to question and contempt, insomuch, that betwixt the hypocrite and the Atheist, the very foundations of religion and good manners are shaken, and the two tables of the _Decalogue_ dashed to pieces the one against the other; the laws of government are subjected to the fancies of the vulgar; public authority to the private passions and opinions of the people; and the supernatural motions of grace confounded with the common dictates of nature.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1409

It is not prudent to deny a pardon to any man, without first examining if we stand not in need of it ourselves; for it may be our lot to ask it, even at his feet to whom we refuse it. But we are willing enough to do what we are very unwilling to suffer. It is unreasonable to charge public vices upon particular persons; for we are all of us wicked, and that which we blame in others we find in ourselves. It is not a paleness in one, or a leanness in another, but a pestilence that has laid hold upon all.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 725

If a short obstinacy of mind can do this, how much more shall a composed and deliberate virtue, whose force is equal and perpetual.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1155

Virtue may show itself as well in the bed as in the field; and he that cheerfully encounters the terrors of death and corporal anguish, is as great a man as he that most generously hazards himself in a battle. A disease, it is true, bars us of some pleasures, but procures us others. Drink is never so grateful to us as in a burning fever; nor meat, as when we have fasted ourselves sharp and hungry.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 987

The truth is, we are more solicitous about our dress than our manners, and about the order of our periwigs than that of the government. At this rate, let us but discount, out of a life of a hundred years, that time which has been spent upon popular negotiations, frivolous amours, domestic brawls, sauntering up and down to no purpose, diseases that we have brought upon ourselves, and this large extent of life will not amount perhaps to the minority of another man.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 49

I came into the Capitol,” says Seneca, “where the several deities had their several servants and attendants, their lictors, their dressers, and all in posture and action, as if they were executing their offices; some to hold the glass, others to comb out Juno’s and Minerva’s hair; one to tell Jupiter what o’clock it is; some lasses there are that sit gazing upon the image, and fancy Jupiter has a kindness for them.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1372

I have known some that have advised looking in a glass when a man is in the fit, and the very spectacle of his own deformity has cured him. Many that are troublesome in their drink, and know their own infirmity, give their servant order beforehand to take them away by force for fear of mischief, and not to obey their masters themselves when they are hot-headed. If the thing were duly considered we should need no other cure than the bare consideration of it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 944

He that converses with the proud shall be puffed up; a lustful acquaintance makes a man lascivious; and the way to secure a man from wickedness is to withdraw from the examples of it. It is too much to have them _near_ us, but more to have them _within_ us—ill examples, pleasure and ease, are, no doubt of it, great corrupters of manners.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 591

It is a great virtue to _love_, to _give_, and to _follow good counsel_; if it does not _lead_ us to honesty, it does at least _prompt_ us to it. As several parts make up but one harmony, and the most agreeable music arises from discords; so should a wise man gather many acts, many precepts, and the examples of many arts, to inform his own life.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1469

It is the interest of the people, by the consent of all nations, to run all hazards for the safety of their prince, and by a thousand deaths to redeem that one life, upon which so many millions depend. Does not the whole body serve the mind, though only the one is exposed to the eye and the other not, but thin and invisible, the very seat of it being uncertain? Yet the hands, feet, and eyes, observe the motions of it. We lie down, run about and ramble, as that commands us.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 157

There is not any benefit so glorious in itself, but it may yet be exceedingly sweetened and improved by the _manner_ of conferring it. The virtue, I know, rests in the _intent,_ the profit in the judicious application of the _matter_; but the beauty and ornament of an obligation lies in the _manner_ of it; and it is then perfect when the dignity of the office is accompanied with all the charms and delicacies of humanity, good-nature, and address; and with dispatch too; for he that puts a man off from time to time, was never right at heart.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 868

The piety and moderation of Scipio have made his memory more venerable than his arms; and more yet after he left his country than while he defended it: for matters were come to that pass, that either Scipio must be injurious to Rome or Rome to Scipio. Coarse bread and water to a temperate man is as good as a feast; and the very herbs of the field yield a nourishment to man as well as to beasts. It was not by choice meats and perfumes that our forefathers recommended themselves, but in virtuous actions, and the sweat of honest, military, and of manly labors.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 550

As men of letters are the most useful and excellent of friends, so are they the best of subjects; as being better judges of the blessings they enjoy under a well-ordered government, and of what they owe to the magistrate for their freedom and protection. They are men of sobriety and learning, and free from boasting and insolence; they reprove the vice without reproaching the person; for they have learned to be without either pomp or envy.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 945

A rocky ground hardens the horse’s hoof; the mountaineer makes the best soldier; the miner makes the best pioneer, and severity of discipline fortifies the mind. In all excesses and extremities of good and of ill fortune, let us have recourse to great examples that have contemned both. “These are the best instructors that teach in their lives, and prove their words by their actions.”

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 70

“Seneca, without any surprise or disorder, calls for his will; which being refused him by the officer, he turned to his friends, and told them that since he was not permitted to requite them as they deserved, he was yet at liberty to bequeath them the thing of all others that he esteemed the most, that is, the image of his life; which should give them the reputation both of _constancy_ and _friendship_, if they would but imitate it; exhorting them to a firmness of mind, sometimes by good counsel, otherwhile by reprehension, as the occasion required.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1033

Many people, I know, seek business without choosing it, and they are even weary of their lives without it for want of entertainment in their own thoughts; the hours are long and hateful to them when they are alone, and they seem as short on the other side in their debauches. When they are no longer _candidates_, they are _suffragans_; when they give over other people’s business, they do their own; and pretend business, but they make it, and value themselves upon being thought men of employment.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 739

It were some comfort yet to the frailty of mankind and of human affairs, if things might but decay as slowly as they rise; but they grow by degrees, and they fall to ruin in an instant. There is no felicity in anything either private or public; men, nations, and cities, have all their fates and periods; our very entertainments are not without terror, and our calamity rises there where we least expect it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 649

We may enlarge, indeed, or contract, according to the circumstances of time, place, or abilities; but above all things we must be sure to keep ourselves in action, for he that is slothful is dead even while he lives. Was there ever any state so desperate as that of Athens under the thirty tyrants—where it was capital to be honest, and the senate-house was turned into a college of hangmen? Never was any government so wretched and so hopeless; and yet Socrates at the same time preached _temperance_ to the _tyrants_, and courage to the rest, and afterwards died an eminent example of faith and resolution, and a sacrifice for the common good.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1510

Augustus was pleased to sit upon the fact in the house of Arius, only as a _single member_ of the _council_ that was to examine it: if it had been in Cæsar’s palace, the judgment must have been Cæsar’s and not the _father’s_. Upon a full hearing of the matter, Cæsar directed that every man should write his opinion whether _guilty_ or _not_, and without declaring of his own, for fear of a partial vote.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 345

There are certain rules in common betwixt the giver and the receiver. We must do both cheerfully, that the giver may receive the fruit of his benefit in the very act of bestowing it. It is a just ground of satisfaction to _see_ a friend pleased; but it is much more to _make_ him so. The intention of the one is to be suited to the intention of the other; and there must be an emulation betwixt them, whether shall oblige most.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 741

I am to-day safe and happy in the love of my country; I am to-morrow banished: to-day in pleasure, peace, health; to-morrow broken upon a wheel, led in triumph, and in the agony of sickness. Let us therefore prepare for a shipwreck in the port, and for a tempest in a calm. One violence drives me from my country, another ravishes that from me; and that very place where a man can hardly pass this day for a crowd may be to-morrow a desert.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1140

And there is no thought of curing us by the diversion of sports and entertainments; we are apt to fall into relapses; wherefore we had better overcome our sorrow than delude it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1205

Those things that he had written in honor of Augustus, he recited and burnt, and publicly professed himself Cæsar’s enemy.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 704

Some people are _never_ at quiet, others are _always_ so, and they are both to blame: for that which looks like vivacity and industry in the one is only a restlessness and agitation; and that which passes in the other for moderation and reserve is but a drowsy and unactive sloth. Let motion and rest both take their turns, according to the order of Nature, which makes both the day and the night.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 990

The calamities of human nature may be divided into the _fear of death_, and the _miseries and errors of life_. And it is the great work of mankind to master the one, and to rectify the other; and so live as neither to make life irksome to us, nor death terrible. It should be our care, before we are old, to live well, and when we are so, to die well; that we may expect our end without sadness: for it is the duty of life to prepare ourselves for death; and there is not an hour we live that does not mind us of our mortality.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 139

Nay, if I knew a man to be incurably thankless, I would yet be so kind as to put him in his way, or let him light a candle at mine, or draw water at my well; which may stand him perhaps in great stead, and yet not be reckoned as a benefit from me; for I do it carelessly, and not for his sake, but my own; as an office of humanity, without any choice or kindness.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 523

Nay, the mind itself has its variety of perverse pleasures as well as the body: as insolence, self-conceit, pride, garrulity, laziness, and the abusive wit of turning everything into _ridicule_, whereas virtue weighs all this, and corrects it. It is the knowledge both of others and of itself; it is to be learned from itself; and the very will itself may be taught; which will cannot be right, unless the whole habit of the mind be right from whence the will comes.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1003

While we are young we may learn; our minds are tractable and our bodies fit for labor and study; but when age comes on, we are seized with languor and sloth, afflicted with diseases, and at last we leave the world as ignorant as we came into it—only we _die_ worse than we were _born_, which is none of Nature’s fault, but ours; for our fears, suspicions, perfidy, etc., are from ourselves.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 691

There is nothing falls amiss to a good man that can be charged upon Providence; for wicked actions, lewd thoughts, ambitious projects, blind lusts, and insatiable avarice—against all these he is armed by the benefit of reason: and do we expect now that God should look to our luggage too? (I mean our bodies.) Demetrius discharged himself of his treasure as the clog and burden of his mind: shall we wonder then if God suffers that to befall a good man which a good man sometimes does to himself?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 865

When I look back into the moderation of past ages, it makes me ashamed to discourse, as if poverty had need of any consolation; for we are now come to that degree of intemperance, that a fair patrimony is too little for a meal. Homer had but one servant, Plato three, and Zeno (the master of the masculine sect of Stoics) had none at all.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 906

who, when he found that he had killed the Secretary instead of Porsenna, (the prince,) burnt his right hand to ashes for the mistake; and held his arm in the flame until it was taken away by his very enemies. Porsenna did more easily pardon Mucius for his intent to kill him than Mucius forgave _himself_ for missing of his aim. He might have a luckier thing, but never a braver.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1338

It is only the vexation and infirmity of a weak mind, as well as the practice of a haughty and insolent nature, and signifies no more to a wise and sober man than an idle dream, that is no sooner past than forgotten. It is true, it implies contempt; but what needs any man care for being contemptible to others, if he be not so to himself?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 499

And what is the difference (in effect) betwixt _old men_ and _children_, but that the _one_ deals in _paintings_ and _statues_, and the _other_ in _babies_, so that we ourselves are only the more expensive fools.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 972

It goes a great way toward the making of a man faithful, to let him understand that you think him so: and he that does but so much as suspect that I will deceive him gives me a kind of right to cozen him. When I am with my friend, methinks I am alone, and as much at liberty to speak anything as to think it, and as our hearts are one, so must be our interest and convenience; for friendship lays all things in common, and nothing can be good to the one that is ill to the other. I do not speak of such a community as to destroy one another’s propriety; but as the father and the mother have two children, not one apiece, but each of them two.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 486

There are _three degrees of proficients_ in the school of wisdom. The _first_ are those that come within sight of it, but not up to it—they have learned what they ought to do, but they have not put their knowledge in practice—they are past the hazard of a relapse, but they have still the grudges of a disease, though they are out of the danger of it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 718

We are never quiet; to-day we seek an office, to-morrow we are sick of it. 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 to-morrow; 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. As levity is a pernicious enemy to quiet, so pertinacity is a great one too.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 951

Writing does well, but personal discourse and conversation does better; for men give great credit to their ears, and take stronger impressions from example than precept. Cleanthes had never hit Zeno so to the life if he had not been in with him at all his privacies, if he had not watched and observed him whether or not he practised as he taught. Plato got more from Socrates’ _manners_ than from his _words_, and it was not the _school_, but the company and _familiarity_ of Epicurus that made Metrodorus, Hermachus and Polyænus so famous.