40.  Never indulge a lazy disposition, there are few things but are attended with some difficulties, and if you are frightened at those difficulties, you will not complete any thing.  Indolent minds prefer ignorance to trouble; they look upon most things as impossible, because perhaps they are difficult.  Even an hour’s attention is too laborious for them, and they would rather content themselves with the first view of things than take the trouble to look any farther into them.  Thus, when they come to talk upon subjects to those who have studied them, they betray an unpardonable ignorance, and lay themselves open to answers that confuse them.  Be careful then, that you do not get the appellation of indolent, and, if possible, avoid the character of frivolous.

41.  For the frivolous mind is busied always upon nothing.  It mistakes trifling objects for important ones, and spends that time upon little matters, that should only be bestowed upon great ones.  Knick-knacks, butterflies, shells, and such like, engross the attention of the frivolous man, and fill up all his time.  He studies the dress and not the characters of men, and his subjects of conversation are no other than the weather, his own domestic affairs, his servants, his method of managing his family, the little anecdotes of the neighborhood, and the fiddle-faddle stories of the day; void of information, void of improvement.  These he relates with emphasis, as interesting matters; in short, he is a male gossip.  I appeal to your own feelings now, whether such things do not lessen a man in the opinion, of his acquaintance, and instead of attracting esteem, create disgust.

Modesty.

Modesty is the citidel of beauty and virtue.  The first of all virtues is innocence; the second is modesty.

1.  Modesty is both in its source, and in its consequence, a very great happiness to the fair possessor of it; it arises from a fear of dishonor, and a good conscience, and is followed immediately, upon its first appearance, with the reward of honor and esteem, paid by all those who discover it in any body living.

2.  It is indeed a virtue in a woman (that might otherwise be very disagreeable to one) so exquisitely delicate, that it excites in any beholder, of a generous and manly disposition, almost all the passions that he would be apt to conceive for the mistress of his heart, in variety of circumstances.

3.  A woman that is modest creates in us an awe in her company, a wish for her welfare, a joy in her being actually happy, a sore and painful sorrow if distress should come upon her, a ready and willing heart to give her consolation, and a compassionate temper towards her, in every little accident of life she undergoes; and to sum up all in one word, it causes such a kind of angelical love, even to a stranger, as good natured brothers and sisters usually bear towards one another.