Just as food eaten without caring for it is turned into loathsome nourishment, so study without a taste for it spoils memory, by retaining nothing which it has taken in.
1176.
Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
1177.
On Mount Etna the words freeze in your mouth and you may make ice of them.[Footnote 2: There is no clue to explain this strange sentence.]
Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.
You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.
When Fortune comes, seize her in front with a sure hand, because behind she is bald.
1178.
It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts.