(54.) When we have done all that we can do for certain people in order to acquire their friendship, and we find we have been unsuccessful, there is still one resource left to us, which is, not to do anything more.
(55.) To live with our enemies as if they might one day become our friends,[194] and to live with our friends as if they might some time or other become our enemies, is equally opposed to the very nature of hatred, as well as to the rules of friendship. It may be a political maxim, it is certainly not a moral one.
(56.) We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better. We ought to choose friends of such a high and honourable character that, even after having ceased to remain our friends, they should not abuse our confidence, nor make us dread them as our enemies.
(57.) It is pleasant to visit our friends because we like and esteem them; it is a torture to frequent them because we want them; then we become applicants.
(58.) We should try and gain the affections of those to whom we wish to do good rather than of those who could do us some good.[195]
(59.) We do not employ the same means for bettering our position as we do in pursuing frivolous and fanciful things. We feel a certain kind of freedom in acting according to our fancy, and, on the contrary, a certain kind of thraldom in labouring for obtaining a place. It is natural to desire it ardently and to take little pains to obtain it, for we think that we deserve it without seeking for it.
(60.) He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself sufficiently rewarded.
(61.) There are certain people who so ardently and so passionately[196] desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.
(62.) Those things which we desire most never happen at all, or do not happen at the right time, and under those circumstances when they would have given us the greatest pleasure.
(63.) We must laugh before we are happy, or else we may die before ever having laughed at all.