["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is called compassion."—Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]
265.—A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see.
["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong." Dryden, Absalom And Achitophel{, line 547}.]
266.—We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues.
267.—A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.
268.—We credit judges with the meanest motives, and yet we desire our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us—and yet 'tis only to make these men decide in our favour that we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life.
269.—No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
270.—One honour won is a surety for more.
271.—Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.
["The best of life is but intoxication."—{Lord Byron, } Don Juan{, Canto II, stanza 179}. In the 1st Edition, 1665, the maxim finishes with—"it is the fever of health, the folly of reason.">[