LXI. A man who is always defending his friends from the most trifling charges, will be apt to make other people their enemies.
LXII. There are those who see everything through a medium of enthusiasm or prejudice; and who therefore think, that to admit any blemish in a friend, is to compromise his character altogether. The instant you destroy their heated exaggerations, they feel that they have no other ground to stand upon.
LXIII. We are ridiculous enough in setting up for patterns of perfection ourselves, without becoming answerable for that of others. It is best to confine our absurdities at home.
LXIV. We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues. Indeed, we never have much esteem or regard, except for those that we can afford to speak our minds of freely; whose follies vex us in proportion to our anxiety for their welfare, and who have plenty of redeeming points about them to balance their defects. When we ‘spy abuses’ of this kind, it is a wiser and more generous proceeding to give vent to our impatience and ill-humour, than to brood over it, and let it, by sinking into our minds, poison the very sources of our goodwill.
LXV. To come to an explanation with a friend is to do away half the cause of offence; as to declare the grounds of our complaints and chagrin to a third party, is tacitly to pass them over. Our not daring to hint at the infirmities of a friend implies that we are ashamed to own them, and that we can only hope to keep on good terms with him by being blind to his real character.
LXVI. It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species.
LXVII. Even among actors, painters, &c. those who are the most perfect, are not always the most admired. It is those who strike by their inequalities, and whose faults and excellences keep up a perpetual warfare between the partizans on both sides, that are the most talked of and produce the greatest effect. Nothing is prominent that does not act as a foil to itself. Emery’s acting was without a fault. This was all that was ever said about it. His merit was one of those things that nobody insisted on, because it was taken for granted. Mr Kean agitates and almost convulses the public mind by contrary extremes. It is a question whether Raphael would have acquired so great a name, if his colouring had been equal to his drawing or expression. As it is, his figures stand out like a rock, severed from its base: while Correggio’s are lost in their own beauty and sweetness. Whatever has not a mixture of imperfection in it, soon grows insipid, or seems ‘stupidly good.’
LXVIII. I have known persons without a friend—never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.
LXIX. The study of metaphysics has this advantage, at least—it promotes a certain integrity and uprightness of understanding, which is a cure for the spirit of lying. He who has devoted himself to the discovery of truth feels neither pride nor pleasure in the invention of falsehood, and cannot condescend to any such paltry expedient. If you find a person given to vulgar shifts and rhodomontade, and who at the same time tells you he is a metaphysician, do not believe him.
LXX. It is the mischief of the regular study of all art and science, that it proportionably unfits a man for those pursuits or emergencies in life, which require mere courage and promptitude. To any one who has found how difficult it is to arrive at truth or beauty, with all the pains and time he can bestow upon them, everything seems worthless that can be obtained by a mere assumption of the question, or putting a good face upon the matter. Let a man try to produce a fine picture, or to solve an abstruse problem by giving himself airs of self-importance, and see what he will make of it. But in the common intercourse of life, too much depends on this sort of assurance and quackery. This is the reason why scholars and other eminent men so often fail in what personally concerns themselves. They cannot take advantage of the follies of mankind; nor submit to arrive at the end they have in view by unworthy means. Those who cannot make the progress of a single step in a favourite study without infinite pains and preparation, scorn to carry the world before them, or to win the good opinion of any individual in it, by vapouring and impudence. Yet these last qualities often succeed without an atom of true desert; and ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ In nine cases out of ten, the mere sanguineness of our pursuit ensures success; but the having tasked our faculties as much as they will bear, does not tend to enhance our overweening opinion of ourselves. The labours of the mind, like the drudgery of the body, impair our animal spirits and alacrity. Those who have done nothing, fancy themselves capable of everything: while those who have exerted themselves to the utmost, only feel the limitation of their powers, and evince neither admiration of themselves nor triumph over others. Their work is still to do, and they have no time or disposition for fooling. This is the reason why the greatest men have the least appearance of it.