The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [208]
6. Scratch an artist and you surprise a child.
7. Great artists are simplifiers.
Chapter 12: Aspiration
1. Who stays in the valley shall never surmount the hill.
2. What defines you is not what you do, but what you would do.
3. One is complete only if one desires to be more.
Chapter 13: Avarice
1. The covetous do nothing well until they die.
2. Avarice and happiness do not share a home.
3. Avarice is a spur to industry.
4. It is not lack but abundance that breeds avarice.
5. They who covet are always poor.
6. Poverty lacks much, avarice lacks everything.
7. Misers fear to use their gains.
8. The miser is as bereft of what he has as of what he lacks.
Chapter 14: Beauty
1. Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
2. All heiresses are beautiful.
3. Beauty and folly are old companions.
4. Beauty and honesty seldom agree.
5. Beauty carries its dower in its face.
6. Beauty is its own excuse.
7. Beauty is a natural superiority.
8. Beauty provokes thieves sooner than gold.
9. Where beauty is, there will be love.
10. Beauty is as good as ready money.
11. Beauty opens locked doors.
12. Most women would rather be beautiful than good.
13. Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
14. There is beauty enough where there is goodness enough.
15. Rare is the union of beauty and modesty.
16. Beauty is a short-lived reign.
17. Beauty is a fading flower.
18. When the candles are out all women are fair, with money in hand all men are handsome.
Chapter 15: Beginnnings
1. At first everything is difficult.
2. All glory comes from daring to begin.
3. Better never begin than never end.
4. Who begins many things ends few.
5. The first step is as good as half over.
6. What begins with tow will not end as silk.
7. Things are always at their best at the beginning.
8. All beginnings are small.
Chapter 16: Belief
1. Believe not all you see or half you hear.
1. He does not believe who does not live accordingly.
2. Each person’s own belief is true.
3. Who believes everything, misses; who believes nothing, misses.
4. People believe what they wish were true.
5. Quick believers need broad shoulders.
6. A belief is not true because it is useful.
7. Who quick believes late repents.
8. Who knows much believes less.
Chapter 17: Benefit
1. Benefits, like flowers, please when fresh.
2. Benefits turn to poison in bad minds.
3. The last benefit is the most remembered.
4. When benefited, remember it; when benefiting, forget it.
5. Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
6. Who confers a benefit loves more than the one benefited.
7. Benefits are acceptable only if they can be repaid.
8. Benefits are traced on sand, injuries on brass.
9. To accept a benefit is to sell one’s freedom.
10. To benefit the worthy is to benefit all.
Chapter 18: Birth
1. No one can help being born.
2. We are not completely born until we are dead.
3. I wept when I was born, and every day shows why.
4. No one is born with an axe in hand.
5. No one is born a partisan of this or that cause; all such are made.
Chapter 19: Blindness
1. The sky is not less blue because the blind cannot see it.
2. A pebble and a diamond are alike to the blind.
3. Better be blind than see ill.
4. Better half blind than both eyes out.
5. People are most blind in their own cause.
6. The blind eat many a fly.
7. Blind men should judge no colours.
8. The eyes are blind when the mind is elsewhere.
9. Among the blind close your eyes.
Chapter 20: Blushing
1. Whoever blushes is not quite a brute.
2. People blush less for their crimes than their weaknesses.
3. Rather see a young man blush than turn pale.
4. When the guilty blush it is a sign of mending.
5. Rather bring blood to the cheek than let it out of the body.
Chapter 21: Boldness
1. The bold never lack a weapon.
2. Bold knaves thrive without a grain of sense, while the good starve for want of impudence.
3. Boldness is an ill keeper of promises.
4. Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.
5. It is a bold mouse that breeds in the cat’s ear.