Man has but very little strength of mind, for disgrace or mortifications are needed to make him more humane, pliable, less rude, and more of a gentleman.
(95.) If we observe certain people at court, their discourses and their whole conduct show that they think neither of their grandfathers nor grandchildren; they only care for the present, and that they do not enjoy, but abuse.
(96.) Straton[447] is born under two planets, equally fortunate and unfortunate; his life is a romance, but with even less probability. Adventures he had none, but good and bad dreams in abundance, or, if I may say so, no dreams come up to his life. Fate has been to none more kind than to him; he is acquainted with the mean and the extremes of life; he has made a figure, been in distress, led an ordinary life, and gone through all vicissitudes. He has made himself valued for those virtues which he seriously asserted he possessed; he has said of himself, “I have intelligence and courage,” and every one said after him, “He has intelligence and courage.” In his good and bad fortune he has experienced the disposition of courtiers, who said of him perhaps more good and more ill than ever he deserved. When people praised him they called him pretty, amiable, rare, wonderful, and heroic; and words quite the contrary have also been employed to vilify him. His character is heterogeneous, mixed and confused; his life has been an enigma, which is not yet wholly solved.
(97.) Favour raises a man above his equals, and disgrace throws him below them.
(98.) He who one day or other deliberately abandons a great name, a great authority, or a large fortune, frees himself at once from many troubles, many restless nights, and sometimes from many crimes.
(99.) The world will be the same a hundred years hence as it is now; there will be the same stage and the same decorations, though not the same actors. All who were glad to receive favours, as well as those who were grieved and in despair for boons that were refused, shall have disappeared from the boards; others have already made their entrances who will act the same parts in the same plays, and in their turn make their exits, whilst those who have not yet appeared one day will also be gone, and fresh actors will take their places. What reliance is there to be placed on any actor?
(100.) Whoever has seen the court has seen the most handsome, the best-looking, and the most decked-out part of the world. He who despises the court after having seen it, despises the world.
(101.) The city makes a man take a dislike to the country; the country undeceives him as to the city and cares of the court.
A healthy mind acquires at court a liking for solitude and retirement.[448]