ne surprises us by giving us some great office without
having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our
hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear
worthy to fill it.

450.--Our pride is often increased by what we retrench from our other
faults.

["The loss of sensual pleasures was supplied and compensated by
spiritual pride."--Gibbon. Decline And Fall, chap. xv.]

451.--No fools so wearisome as those who have some wit.

452.--No one believes that in every respect he is behind the man he
considers the ablest in the world.

453.--In great matters we should not try so much to create opportunities
as to utilise those that offer themselves.

[Yet Lord Bacon says "A wise man will make more opportunities than he
finds."--Essays, {(1625), "Of Ceremonies and Respects"}]

454.--There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by
giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.

455.--However disposed the world may be to judge wrongly, it far oftener
favours false merit than does justice to true.

456.--Sometimes we meet a fool with wit, never one with discretion.

457.--We should gain more by letting the world see what we are than by
trying to seem what we are not.

458.--Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us
than we do in our opinion of ourselves.

459.--There are many remedies to cure love, yet none are infallible.

460.--It would be well for us if we knew all our passions make us do.

461.--Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of life all the
pleasures of youth.

462.--The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe
ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.

463.--There is often more pride than goodness in our grief for our
enemies' miseries; it is to show how superior we are to them, that we
bestow on them the sign of our compassion.

464.--There exists an excess of good and evil which surpasses our
comprehension.

465.--Innocence is most fortunate if it finds the same protection as
crime.

466.--Of all the violent passions the one that becomes a woman best is
love.

467.--Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.

468.--Some bad qualities form great talents.

469.--We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason.

470.--All our qualities are uncertain and doubtful, both the good as
well as the bad, and