They fancy that to think of one’s self is to be delighted with one’s self; to frequent and converse with one’s self, to be overindulgent; but this excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one’s self with one’s self, and the building one’s self up a mere building of castles in the air; who look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the nothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, “to know himself,” and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know himself, let him boldly speak it out.
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Addresses his voyage
to no certain, port
All apprentices when
we come to it (death)
Any one may deprive
us of life; no one can deprive us of death
Business to-morrow
Condemning wine, because
some people will be drunk
Conscience makes us
betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves
Curiosity and of that
eager passion for news
Delivered into our own
custody the keys of life
Drunkeness a true and
certain trial of every one’s nature
I can more hardly believe
a man’s constancy than any virtue
“I wish you good
health.” “No health to thee,”
replied the other
If to philosophise be,
as ’tis defined, to doubt
Improperly we call this
voluntary dissolution, despair
It’s madness to
nourish infirmity
Let him be as wise as
he will, after all he is but a man
Living is slavery if
the liberty of dying be wanting.
Look upon themselves
as a third person only, a stranger
Lower himself to the
meanness of defending his innocence
Much difference betwixt
us and ourselves
No alcohol the night
on which a man intends to get children
No excellent soul is
exempt from a mixture of madness
Not conclude too much
upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity
One door into life,
but a hundred thousand ways out
Ordinary method of cure
is carried on at the expense of life
Plato forbids children
wine till eighteen years of age