Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 268

THERE ARE MANY CASES WHEREIN A MAN MAY BE MINDED OF A BENEFIT, BUT IT IS VERY RARELY TO BE CHALLENGED, AND NEVER TO BE UPBRAIDED.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 218

This is one of those subtleties, which, though hardly worth a man’s while, yet it is not labor absolutely lost neither. There is more of trick and artifice in it than solidity; and yet there is matter of diversion too; enough perhaps to pass away a winter’s evening, and keep a man waking that is heavy-headed.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 807

They are achieved with labor, and the very guard of them is painful. Ambition puffs us up with vanity and wind: and we are equally troubled either to see any body before us, or nobody behind us; so that we lie under a double envy; for whosoever envies another is also envied himself. What matters it how far Alexander extended his conquests, if he was not yet satisfied with what he had? Every man wants as much as he covets; and it is lost labor to pour into a vessel that will never be full.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1055

It is only the disguise that affrights us; as children that are terrified with a vizor. Take away the instruments of death, the fire, the ax, the guards, the executioners, the whips, and the racks; take away the pomp, I say, and the circumstances that accompany it, and death is no more than what my slave yesterday contemned; the pain is nothing to a fit of the stone; if it be tolerable, it is not great; and if intolerable, it cannot last long.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 681

To lose a child or a limb, is only to part with what we have received, and Nature may do what she pleases with her own. We are frail ourselves, and we have received things transitory—that which was given us may be taken away—calamity tries virtue as the fire does gold, nay, he that lives most at ease is only delayed, not dismissed, and his portion is to come.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 445

He that gives is prompted to it by a goodness of mind, and the generosity of the action is lessened by the caution: for it is his desire that the receiver should please himself, and owe no more than he thinks fit. But what if this might occasion fewer benefits, so long as they would be franker? nor is there any hurt in putting a check upon rashness and profusion.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1167

There is no ambition in hunger or thirst: let there be food, and no matter for the table, the dish, and the servants, nor with what meats nature is satisfied. Those are the torments of luxury, that rather stuff the stomach than fill it: it studies rather to cause an appetite than to allay it. It is not for us to say, “This is not handsome; that is common; the other offends my eye.” Nature provides for health, not delicacy.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 796

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.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 555

And so in his invectives against vain pleasures, he did at such a rate advance the felicities of a sober table, a pure mind, and a chaste body that a man could not hear him without a love for continence and moderation. Upon these lectures of his, I denied myself, for a while after, certain delicacies that I had formerly used: but in a short time I fell to them again, though so sparingly, that the proportion came little short of a total abstinence.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 279

He is ungrateful that disowns an obligation, and so is he that dissembles it, or to his power does not requite it; but the worst of all is he that forgets it. Conscience, or occasion, may revive the rest; but here the very memory of it is lost. Those eyes that cannot endure the light are weak, but those are stark blind that cannot see it. I do not love to hear people say, “Alas!

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1257

If anger was sufferable in any case, it might be allowed against an incorrigible criminal under the hand of justice: but punishment is not matter of anger but of caution. The law is without passion, and strikes malefactors as we do serpents and venomous creatures, for fear of greater mischief.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1419

The _original_ of this _cruelty_ perhaps was _anger_, which by frequent _exercise_ and _custom_, has lost all sense of _humanity_ and _mercy_, and they that are thus affected are so far from the countenance and appearance of men in _anger_, that they will _laugh_, _rejoice_, and _entertain themselves_ with the most _horrid spectacles_, as _racks_, _jails_, _gibbets_, several sorts of _chains_ and _punishments_, _dilaceration_ of _members_, _stigmatizing_, and _wild beasts_, with other exquisite inventions of torture; and yet, at last the cruelty itself is more horrid and odious than the means by which it works.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 104

Whether did Anchises more for Æneas, in dandling the child in his arms; or Æneas for his father, when he carried him upon his back through the flames of Troy, and made his name famous to future ages among the founders of the Roman Empire? T. Manlius was the son of a sour and imperious father, who banished him his house as a blockhead, and a scandal to the family.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1179

All I desire is that my property may not be a burden to myself, or make me so to others; and that is the best state of fortune that is neither directly necessitous, nor far from it. A mediocricity of fortune with a gentleness of mind, will preserve us from fear or envy, which is a desirable condition, for no man wants power to do mischief. We never consider the blessing of coveting nothing, and the glory of being full in ourselves, without depending upon Fortune. With parsimony a little is sufficient and without it nothing; whereas frugality makes a poor man rich. If we lose an estate, we had better never have had it—he that has least to lose has least to fear, and those are better satisfied whom Fortune never favored, than those whom she has forsaken.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1501

Upon your petition for the priesthood, I granted it, with a repulse to the sons of those that had been my fellow-soldiers; and you are at this day so happy and so rich, that even the conquerors envy him that is overcome; and yet after all this, you are in a plot, Cinna, to murder me.” At that word Cinna started, and interposed with exclamations, “that certainly he was far from being either so wicked or so mad.” “This is a breach of conditions, Cinna,” says Augustus, “it is not your time to speak yet: I tell you again, that you are in a plot to murder me;” and so he told him the time, the place, the confederates, the order and manner of the design, and who it was that was to do the deed.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 829

He that would deliver himself from all apprehensions of the future, let him first take for granted, that all fears will fall upon him; and then examine and measure the evil that he fears, which he will find to be neither great nor long. Beside, that the ills which he fears he may suffer, he suffers in the very fear of them.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 543

The _physician_ may prescribe diet and exercise, and accommodate his rule and medicine to the disease, but it is _philosophy_ that must bring us to a contempt of death, which is the remedy of all diseases. In poverty it gives us riches, or such a state of mind as makes them superfluous to us.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 864

What is he the worse for poverty that despises these things? nay, is he not rather the better for it, because he is not able to go to the price of them? for he is kept sound whether he will or not: and that which a man _cannot_ do, looks many times as if he _would not_.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1511

Before the opening of the books, Cæsar passed an oath, that he would not be Arius’s _heir_: and to show that he had no interest in his sentence, as appeared afterward; for he was not condemned to the ordinary _punishments_ of _parricides_, nor to a prison, but, by the mediation of Cæsar, only banished Rome, and confined to the place which his father should name; Augustus insisting upon it, that the father should content himself with an easy punishment: and arguing that the young man was not moved to the attempt by _malice_, and that he was but half resolved upon the fact, for he wavered in it; and, therefore, to remove him from the city, and from his father’s sight, would be sufficient.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 355

For a Stoic to fear the name of a king, when yet monarchy is the best state of government; or there to hope for liberty, where so great rewards are propounded, both for tyrants and their slaves; for him to imagine ever to bring the laws to their former state, where so many thousand lives had been lost in the contest, not so much whether they should serve or not, but who should be their master: he was strangely mistaken, in the nature and reason of things, to fancy, that when Julius was gone, somebody else would not start up in his place, when there was yet a Tarquin found, after so many kings that were destroyed, either by sword or thunder: and yet the resolution is, that he might have received it, but not as a benefit; for at that rate I owe my life to every man that does not take it away.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 925

If fortune should have offered that man the government and possession of the whole world, upon condition not to lay it down again, I dare say he would have refused it: and thus have expostulated the matter with you: “Why should you tempt a freeman to put his shoulder under a burden; or an honest man to pollute himself with the dregs of mankind? Why do you offer me the spoils of princes, and of nations, and the price not only of your blood, but of your souls?”

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1130

But do I grieve for my friend’s sake or for my own? Why should I afflict myself for the loss of him that is either happy or not at all in being? In the one case it is envy, and in the other it is madness. We are apt to say, “What would I give to see him again, and to enjoy his conversation!

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 628

A good conscience fears no witnesses, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even of solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it; but if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he that slights that witness!

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 351

I do not speak here of wise men, that love to do what they ought to do; that have their passions at command; that prescribe laws to themselves, and keep them when they have done; but of men in a state of imperfection, that may have a good will perhaps to be honest, and yet be overborne by the contumacy of their affections. We must therefore have a care to whom we become obliged; and I would be much stricter yet in the choice of a creditor for benefits than for money.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 377

Suppose the sun, the moon, and the stars, had no other business than only to pass over our heads, without any effect upon our minds or bodies; without any regard to our health, fruits, or seasons; a man could hardly lift up his eyes towards the heavens without wonder and veneration, to see so many millions of radiant lights, and to observe their courses and revolutions, even without any respect to the common good of the universe.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 179

Two boys were sent out to fetch a certain person to their master: the one of them hunts up and down, and comes home again weary, without finding him; the other falls to play with his companions at the wheel of Fortune, sees him by chance passing by, delivers him his errand, and brings him. He that found him by chance deserves to be punished; and he that sought for him, and missed him, to be rewarded for his good-will.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 400

It is not for an honest man to make way to a good office by a crime: as if a pilot should pray for a tempest, that he might prove his skill: or a general wish his army routed, that he may show himself a great commander in recovering the day. It is throwing a man into a river to take him out again. It is an obligation, I confess, to cure a wound or a disease; but to _make_ that wound or disease on purpose to _cure_ it, is a most perverse ingratitude.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1282

Our fate is at hand, and the very hour that we have set for another man’s death may peradventure be prevented by our own. What is it that we make all this bustle for, and so needlessly disquiet our minds? We are offended with our servants, our masters, our princes, our clients: it is but a little patience, and we shall be all of us equal; so that there is no need either of ambushes or of combats.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 296

To pass over the first point; the second must be handled with care and distinction, and not without some seeming exceptions to the general rule; as first, here is no _choice_ or _intention_ in the case, but it is a good office done him for some _by-interest_, or by _chance_. Secondly, There is no _judgment_ in it neither, for it is to a _wicked man_. But to shorten the matter: without these circumstances it is not properly a benefit; or at least not to him; for it looks another way.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1111

That good old man Bassus, (though with one foot in the grave,) how cheerful a mind does he bear. He lives in the view of death, and contemplates his own end with less concern of thought or countenance, than he would do another man’s. It is a hard lesson, and we are a long time a learning of it, to receive our death without trouble, especially in the case of Bassus: in other deaths there is a mixture of hope—a disease may be cured, a fire quenched, a falling house either propped or avoided, the sea may swallow a man and throw him up again, a pardon may interpose twixt the ax and the body—but in the case of old age there is no place for either hope or intercession.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 938

Some are of opinion that death gives a man courage to support pain, and that pain fortifies a man against death: but I say rather, that a wise man depends upon himself against both, and that he does not either suffer with patience, in hopes of death, or die willingly, because he is weary of life; but he bears the one, and waits for the other, and carries a divine mind through all the accidents of human life. He looks upon faith and honesty as the most sacred good of mankind, and neither to be forced by necessity nor corrupted by reward; kill, burn, tear him in pieces, he will be true to his trust; and the more any man labors to make him discover a secret, the deeper will he hide it. Resolution is the inexpugnable defence of human weakness, and it is a wonderful Providence that attends it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 176

We have already spoken of _benefits_ in _general_; the _matter_ and the _intention_, together with the _manner_ of conferring them. It follows now, in course, to say something of the _value_ of them; which is rated, either by the good they do us, or by the inconvenience they save us, and has no other standard than that of a judicious regard to circumstance and occasion.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 802

Neither does avarice make us only unhappy in ourselves, but malevolent also to mankind. The soldier wishes for war; the husbandman would have his corn dear; the lawyer prays for dissension; the physician for a sickly year; he that deals in curiosities, for luxury and excess, for he makes up his fortunes out of the corruptions of the age.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1494

Augustus was a gracious prince when he had the power in his own hand; but in the _triumviracy_ he made use of his sword, and had his friends ready armed to set upon Antony during that dispute. But he behaved himself afterwards at another rate; for when he was betwixt forty and fifty years of age he was told that Cinna was in a plot to murder him, with the time, place and manner of the design; and this from one of the confederates.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 190

Suppose a man makes suit for a place, and cannot obtain it, but upon the ransom of ten slaves out of the galleys. If there be ten, and _no more_, they owe him nothing for their redemption; but _they_ are indebted to him for the choice, where he might have taken ten others as well as these. Put the case again, that by an act of grace so many prisoners are to be released, their names to be drawn by lot, and mine happens to come out among the rest: one part of my obligation is to him that put me in a capacity of freedom, and the other is to Providence for my being one of that number. The greatest benefits of all have no witnesses, but lie concealed in the conscience.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 270

As there are several sorts of ungrateful men, so there must be several ways of dealing with them, either by artifice, counsel, admonition, or reproof, according to the humor of the person, and the degree of the offence: provided always, that as well in the reminding a man of a benefit, as in the bestowing of it, the good of the receiver be the principal thing intended.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 371

Some receive benefits so coldly and indifferently, that a man would think the obligation lay on the other side: as who should say, “Well, since you will needs have it so, I am content to take it.” Some again so carelessly, as if they hardly knew of any such thing, whereas we should rather aggravate the matter: “You cannot imagine how many you have obliged in this act: there never was so great, so kind, so seasonable a courtesy.” Furnius never gained so much upon Augustus as by a speech, upon the getting of his father’s pardon for siding with Antony: “This grace,” says he, “is the only injury that ever Cæsar did me: for it has put me upon a necessity of living and dying ungrateful.” It is safer to affront some people than to oblige them; for the better a man deserves, the worse they will speak of him: as if the possessing of open hatred to their benefactors were an argument that they lie under no obligation.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 676

the only man that denied any thing to Sylla the dictator, who recalled him. Nor did he only refuse to come, but drew himself further off: “Let them,” says he, “that think banishment a misfortune, live slaves at Rome, under the imperial cruelties of Sylla: he that sets a price upon the heads of senators; and after a law of his own institution against cut-throats, becomes the greatest himself.” Is it not better for a man to live in exile abroad than to be massacred at home?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 291

But it is not enough yet to forbear the casting of a benefit in a man’s teeth; for there are some that will not allow it to be so much as challenged. For an ill man, say they, will not make a return, though it be demanded, and a good man will do it of himself: and then the asking of it seems to turn it into a debt. It is a kind of injury to be too quick with the former: for to call upon him too soon reproaches him, as if he would not have done it otherwise.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 196

God thought of us and provided for us, before he made us: (for unto him all future events are present.) Man was not the work of chance; his mind carries him above the slight of fortune, and naturally aspires to the contemplation of heaven and divine mysteries. How desperate a frenzy is it now to undervalue, nay, to contemn and to disclaim these divine blessings, without which we are utterly incapable of enjoying any other!

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1514

When he comes to look about him, and to consider what he _has_ done, what he _must_, and what he is _about_ to do; what with the _wickedness_, and with the _torments_ of his _conscience_, many times he fears death, oftener he wishes for it; and lives more odious to himself than to his subjects; whereas on the contrary, he that takes a care of the public, though of one part more perhaps than of another, yet there is not any part of it but he looks upon as part of himself.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1326

The sight of a red coat enrages a bull; a shadow provokes the asp; nay, so unreasonable are some men, that they take moderate benefits for injuries, and squabble about it with their nearest relations: “They have done this and that for others,” they cry; “and they might have dealt better with us if they had pleased.” Very good! and if it be less than we looked for, it may be yet more than we deserve.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 200

There are two errors in this proposition: first, to imply that a good man may be overcome; and then to imagine that anything shameful can befall him. The Spartans prohibited all those exercises where the victory was declared by the confession of the contendant. The 300 Fabii were never said to be _conquered_, but _slain_; nor Regulus to be _overcome_, though he was taken _prisoner_ by the Carthaginians.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1509

A son of Titus Arius, being examined and found guilty of _parricide_, was banished Rome, and confined to Marseilles, where his father allowed him the same annuity that he had before; which made all people conclude him guilty, when they saw that his father had yet _condemned_ the son that he could not _hate_.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 652

Demetrius, upon the taking of Megara, asked Stilpo, the philosopher, what he had lost. “Nothing,” said he, “for I had all that I could call my own about me.” And yet the enemy had then made himself master of his patrimony, his children, and his country; but these he looked upon as only adventitious goods, and under the command of fortune.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 927

After seven-and-twenty years spent in arms, he fell under a slavery to the _thirty tyrants_, and most of them his bitter enemies: he came at last to be sentenced as “a violater of religion, a corrupter of youth, and a common enemy to God and man.” After this he was imprisoned, and put to death by poison, which was all so far from working upon his mind, that it never so much as altered his countenance.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1202

It is an idle thing to pretend that we cannot govern our _anger_; for some things that we do are much harder than others that we ought to do; the wildest affections may be tamed by discipline, and there is hardly anything which the mind will do but it may do. There needs no more argument in this case than the instances of several persons, both powerful and impatient, that have gotten the absolute mastery of themselves in this point.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 752

A man may as well wonder that he should be cold in winter, sick at sea, or have his bones clatter together in a wagon, as at the encounter of ill accidents and crosses in the passage of human life; and it is in vain to run away from fortune, as if there were any hiding-place wherein she could not find us; or to expect any quiet from her; for she makes life a perpetual state of war, without so much as any respite or truce.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1398

Let us therefore trust to nothing but what we see, and chide ourselves where we are over-credulous. By this course we shall not be so easily imposed upon, nor put to trouble ourselves about things not worth the while: as the loitering of a servant upon an errand, and the tumbling of a bed, or the spilling of a glass of drink.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1012

It is in life as in a journey; a book or a companion brings us to our lodging before we thought we were half-way. Upon the whole matter we consume ourselves one upon another, without any regard at all to our own particular. I do not speak of such as live in notorious scandal, but even those men themselves, whom the world pronounces happy, are smothered in their felicities, servants to their professions and clients, and drowned in their lusts.