380.—Fortune makes visible our virtues or our vices, as light does objects.
381.—The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is little better than infidelity.
382.—Our actions are like the rhymed ends of blank verses (Bouts-Rimés) where to each one puts what construction he pleases.
[The Bouts-Rimés was a literary game popular in the 17th and 18th centuries—the rhymed words at the end of a line being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the burlesque verse— "I sits with my toes in a Brook, And if any one axes me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy makes me, ses I.">[
383.—The desire of talking about ourselves, and of putting our faults in the light we wish them to be seen, forms a great part of our sincerity.
384.—We should only be astonished at still being able to be astonished.
385.—It is equally as difficult to be contented when one has too much or too little love.
386.—No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.
387.—A fool has not stuff in him to be good.
388.—If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter.