hinkest thou wert half a god,
and art amid thy glory but a man in a gay gown! I who am the ground
here, over whom thou are so proud, have had a hundred such owners
of me as thou callest thyself, more than ever thou hast heard the
names of. And some of them who went proudly over mine head now lie
low in my belly, and my side lieth over them. And many a one shall,
as thou does now, call himself mine owner after thee, who shall
neither be kin to thy blood nor have heard any word of thy name."

Who owned your village, cousin, three thousand years ago?

VINCENT: Three thousand, uncle? Nay, nay, in any king, Christian
or heathen, you may strike off a third part of that well
enough--and, as far as I know, half of the rest, too. In far fewer
years than three thousand it may well fortune that a poor
ploughman's blood may come up to a kingdom, and a king's right
royal kin on the other hand fall down to the plough and cart, and
neither that king know that ever he came from the cart, nor that
carter know that ever he came from the crown.

ANTHONY: We find, Cousin Vincent, in full ancient stories many
strange changes as marvellous as that, come about in the compass of
very few years, in effect. And are such things then in reason so
greatly to be set by, that we should esteem the loss so great, when
we see that in keeping them our surety is so little?

VINCENT: Marry, uncle, but the less surety we have to keep it,
since it is a great commodity to have it, so much more the loth we
are to forgo it.

ANTHONY: That reason shall I, cousin, turn against yourself. For
if it be so as you say, that since the things be commodious, the
less surety that you see you have of keeping them, the more cause
you have to be afraid of losing them; then on the other hand the
more a thing is of its nature such that its commodity bringeth a
man little surety and much fear, that thing of reason the less we
have cause to love. And then, the less cause we have to love a
thing, the less cause have we to care for it or fear its loss, or
be loth to go from it.

VII

We shall yet, cousin, consider in these outward goods of
fortune--as riches, good name, honest estimation, honourable fame,
and authority--in all these things we shall, I say, consider that
we love them and set by them either as things commodious unto us
for the state and condition of this present life, or else as things
that we purpose by the good use of them to make matter of our
me