able modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but
sets off every talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens
all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades of paintings,
it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colours more
beautiful, though not so glowing as they would be without it.

_Addison._

523.

Happy the man who lives at home, making it his business to regulate
his desires.

_La Fontaine._

524.

It is true that men are no fit judges of themselves, because
commonly they are partial to their own cause; yet it is as true that
he who will dispose himself to judge indifferently of himself can do
it better than any body else, because a man can see farther into his
own mind and heart than any one else can.

_Harrington._

525.

Envy is a vice that would pose a man to tell what it should be liked
for. Other vices we assume for that we falsely suppose they bring us
either pleasure, profit, or honour. But in envy who is it can find
any of these? Instead of pleasure, we vex and gall ourselves. Like
cankered brass, it only eats itself, nay, discolours and renders it
noisome. When some one told Agis that those of his neighbour's
family did envy him, "Why, then," says he, "they have a double
vexation--one, with their own evil, the other, at my prosperity."

_Feltham._

526.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of
themselves. They fancy themselves superior to every one else, and,
not being sure of making good their secret pretensions, decline
entering the lists altogether. Thus they "lay the flattering unction
to their souls" that they could have said better things than others,
or that the conversation was beneath them.

_Hazlitt._

527.

It is commonly a dangerous thing for a man to have more sense than
his neighbours. Socrates paid for his superiority with his life; and
if Aristotle saved his skin, accused as he was of heresy by the
chief priest Eurymedon, it was because he took to his heels in time.

_Wieland._

528.

Flattery may be considered as a mode of companionship, degrading but
profitable to him who flatters.