The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [325]
5. And you may, in a great degree, know all mankind.
6. For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank or fortune?
7. You will certainly take great care not to make a person whose goodwill, good word, interest, esteem or friendship you would gain, feel that superiority in you, if you have it.
8. If disagreeable insinuations, sneers or repeated contradictions tease and irritate you, would you use them where you wish to engage and please?
9. Surely not, and I hope you wish to engage and please, almost universally.
10. The temptation of saying a smart and witty thing, and the malicious applause with which it is commonly received, has made more enemies for people who can say them,
11. And, still oftener, people who think they can, but cannot, and yet try;
12. Not only does this make enemies, but it makes implacable ones, and is the surest way to enmity than anything else I know of.
13. If such things shall happen to be said at your expense, reflect seriously upon the sentiments of anger and resentment which they excite in you;
14. And consider whether it can be prudent, by the same means, to excite the same sentiments in others against you.
15. It is a decided folly to lose a friend for a jest; but, in my mind, it is not much less folly to make an enemy of an indifferent and neutral person for the sake of a facetious remark.
16. When things of this kind are said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant of you,
17. But to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly;
18. But, should they be so plain that you cannot be supposed ignorant of their meaning,
19. Join in the laugh of the company against yourself; acknowledge the hit to be a fair one, and the jest good, and play it off in seeming good humour;
20. But by no means reply in the same way; which only shows that you are hurt, and publishes the victory which you might have concealed.
21. Should the thing said indeed injure your honour or moral character, there is but one proper reply, which I hope you never will have occasion to make.
Epistle 7
1. Consider, therefore, how precious every moment of time is to you now.
2. The more you apply to your business, the more you will taste your pleasures.
3. The exercise of the mind in the morning whets the appetite for the pleasures of the evening,
4. As much as the exercise of the body whets the appetite for dinner.
5. Business and pleasure, rightly understood, mutually assist each other, instead of being enemies, as silly or dull people often think them.
6. No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business,
7. And few people do business well, who do nothing else.
8. Thus work and pleasure are friends and helpers to each other, and relieve and sweeten each other.
9. Remember that when I speak of pleasures, I always mean the pleasures of a rational being, and not the brutal ones of a swine.
10. I mean good food, not gluttony; good wine, far short of drunkenness;
11. Pleasant play, without the least gaming; and gallantry, without debauchery.
12. There is a line in all these things which men of sense, for greater security, take care to keep a good deal on the right side of;
13. For sickness, pain, contempt and infamy lie immediately on the other side of that line.
14. Men of sense and merit, in all other respects, may have had some of these failings;
15. But those few examples, instead of inviting us to imitation, should only put us the more upon our guard against weaknesses.
Epistle 8
1. To reflect upon people, their nature, their characters, their manners, will help you to form yourself, as well to know others.
2. It seems as if it were nobody’s business to communicate such knowledge to the young.
3. Their masters teach them the languages or the sciences, but are generally incapable of teaching them the world:
4. Their parents likewise seem incapable, or at least neglect doing it,