6.--In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what
we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors.

["All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely
players."--Shakespeare, As You Like It{, Act II, Scene VII, Jaques}.

"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should
preserve his consistency to the last."--Junius.]

257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal
the want of mind.

["Gravity is the very essence of imposture."--Shaftesbury,
Characteristics, p. 11, vol. I. "The very essence of gravity is design,
and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world
for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its
pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit
had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the
defects of the mind."--Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol. I., chap. ii.]

258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than wit.

259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion
we feel than in that we inspire.

260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed
polite.

261.--The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a
second self-love.

262.--There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in
love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved
one than his own.

263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which
we like more than that we give away.

264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others.
It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We
help others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these
services which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves
by anticipation.

["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the
imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is
called compassion."--Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.]

265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what
we cannot see.

["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong." Dryden, Absalom And
Achitophel{, line 547}.]

266.--We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent
passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness,
languishing as she is, does not often fail in be