CXLIV. Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
CXLV. Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
CXLVI. A mere sanguine temperament often passes for genius and patriotism.
CXLVII. Animal spirits are continually taken for wit and fancy; and the want of them, for sense and judgment.
CXLVIII. In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
CXLIX. Those who cannot miss an opportunity of saying a good thing or of bringing in some fantastical opinion of their own, are not to be trusted with the management of any great question.
CL. There are some public speakers who commit themselves and their party by extravagances uttered in heat and through vanity, which they retract in cold blood through cowardice and caution. They outrage propriety, and trim to self-interest.
CLI. An honest man is respected by all parties. We forgive a hundred rude or offensive things that are uttered from conviction or in the conscientious discharge of a duty—never one, that proceeds from design or with a view to raise the person who says it above us.
CLII. Truth from the mouth of an honest man, or severity from a good-natured one, has a double effect.
CLIII. A person who does not endeavour to seem more than he is, will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture, that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary to decency.