THOUGHTS

ON

VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

THOUGHTS

ON

VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

ARTY is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal, whatsoever, in which the moft ignorant were not the moft violent for a bee is not a bufier animal than a blockhead. However, fuch inftruments are neceffary to Politicians; and perhaps it may be with states as with clocks, which must have some dead weight hanging at them, to help and regulate the motion of the finer and more useful parts.

To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine fense, is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.

Fine fenfe and exalted fenfe are not half fo useful as common fenfe. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a lofs for

want of readier change.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the most mischievous.

The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which depending on fo many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order.

Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.

Modefty, if it were to be recommended for nothing else, this were enough, that the pretending to little leaves a man at eafe; whereas boafting requires a perpetual labour to appear what he is not if we have none, it best hides our want of it. For as blushing will fometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool feem a man of fense.

It is not fo much the being exempt from faults, as the having overcome them, that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with the weeds of a field, which, if destroyed and confumed upon the place of their birth, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever fprung there.

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot fuffer in others, is neither better nor worse than

than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others fo.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by fhewing its faults; as when a ftream difcovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.

Our paffions are like convulfion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.

To be ourselves.

angry is to revenge the fault of others upon

A brave man thinks no one his fuperior who does him an injury; for he has it then in his power to make himself fuperior to the other by forgiving it.

To relieve the oppreffed is the most glorious act a man is capable of; it is in fome measure doing the bufinefs of God and Providence.

I as little fear that God will damn a man that has charity, as I hope that the priests can fave one who has not.

Super