Displeased within a moment

RILE EVIL

A friend whom yon have been gaining during your whole life, you ought not to IK; displeased within a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruhy, take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone.

RULE LVIII.

Reason is under the power of sense; as a man becomes weak in the hand of an artful woman. Shut the door of that house of pleasure, which you hear resounding with the loud voice of a woman.

RULE LIX.

A purpose without power, is fraud and deceit; and power without design, is ignorance and madness. The first requisites are judgment, prudence, awl wisdom, and then a kingdom; because putting power and wealtli into the hand of the ignorant, is furnishing weapons against themselves.

RULE LX.

The liberal man who eats and bestows, is better than the religious man who fasts and hoards. Whosoever hath forsaken luxury, to gain the approbation of mankind, hath fallen from lawful into unlawful voluptuousness. The hermit who sitteth in retirement, not for the sake of God, what shall the hopeless wretch behold in a dark mirror? A little and a little collected together, become a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop form an inundation.

RULE LX I.

A wise man ought not to suffer the insolence of a common person to pass unnoticed, as he thereby injures both parties; for his own respectability will be lessened, and the other confirmed in his ignorance. When you speak to a low fellow with kindness and benignity, it increases his arrogance Mid perverseness.

Sin, by whomsoever committed, is detestable, but most so in a learned man: because learning- is the weapon for combating Satan; and if the armed man is taken prisoner, the greater will be his shame. An ignorant plebeian of dissolute manners, is better than a learned man without temperance: for that, through blindness, lost the road; and this, who had two eyes, fell into the well.