ce of colours.

47.--Our temper sets a price upon every gift that we receive from
fortune.

48.--Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we
are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others
like.

49.--We are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose.

50.--Those who think they have merit persuade themselves that they are
honoured by being unhappy, in order to persuade others and themselves
that they are worthy to be the butt of fortune.

["Ambition has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort
that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we
cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take
a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one
kind or other." --Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I,
Sect. XVII}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite Speech On Conciliation With America.
Also, Burke does not actually write "Ambition has been...", he writes
"It has been..." when speaking of ambition.}

51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfaction which we feel
with ourselves as seeing that we disapprove at one time of that which we
approve of at another.

52.--Whatever difference there appears in our fortunes, there is
nevertheless a certain compensation of good and evil which renders them
equal.

53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give, it is not she alone, but
fortune also that makes the hero.

54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to
avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the
very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard
themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by
which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior ranks of
mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure
which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive
Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded
by poverty and ignorance."--Gibbon, Decline And Fall, Chap. 15.]

55.--The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT
possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it
evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not
being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest