Hazlitt.

538.

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armour-proof against painful emotions; nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer.

Von Humboldt.

539.

Petrarch observes, that we change language, habits, laws, customs, manners, but not vices, not diseases, not the symptoms of folly and madness—they are still the same. And as a river, we see, keeps the like name and place, but not water, and yet ever runs, our times and persons alter, vices are the same, and ever be. Look how nightingales sang of old, cocks crowed, kine lowed, sheep bleated, sparrows chirped, dogs barked, so they do still: we keep our madness still, play the fool still; we are of the same humours and inclinations as our predecessors were; you shall find us all alike, much as one, we and our sons, and so shall our posterity continue to the last.

Burton.

540.

The mother of the useful arts is necessity, that of the fine arts is luxury; for father the former have intellect, the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.

Schopenhauer.