“Ferox gens, nullam vitam rati sine armis esse.”

     ["A fierce people, who thought there was no life without war.” 
     —­Livy, xxxiv. 17.]

How many do we know who have forsaken the calm and sweetness of a quiet life at home amongst their acquaintance, to seek out the horror of unhabitable deserts; and having precipitated themselves into so abject a condition as to become the scorn and contempt of the world, have hugged themselves with the conceit, even to affectation.  Cardinal Borromeo, who died lately at Milan, amidst all the jollity that the air of Italy, his youth, birth, and great riches, invited him to, kept himself in so austere a way of living, that the same robe he wore in summer served him for winter too; he had only straw for his bed, and his hours of leisure from affairs he continually spent in study upon his knees, having a little bread and a glass of water set by his book, which was all the provision of his repast, and all the time he spent in eating.

I know some who consentingly have acquired both profit and advancement from cuckoldom, of which the bare name only affrights so many people.

If the sight be not the most necessary of all our senses, ’tis at least the most pleasant; but the most pleasant and most useful of all our members seem to be those of generation; and yet a great many have conceived a mortal hatred against them only for this, that they were too pleasant, and have deprived themselves of them only for their value:  as much thought he of his eyes that put them out.  The generality and more solid sort of men look upon abundance of children as a great blessing; I, and some others, think it as great a benefit to be without them.  And when you ask Thales why he does not marry, he tells you, because he has no mind to leave any posterity behind him.

That our opinion gives the value to things is very manifest in the great number of those which we do, not so much prizing them, as ourselves, and never considering either their virtues or their use, but only how dear they cost us, as though that were a part of their substance; and we only repute for value in them, not what they bring to us, but what we add to them.  By which I understand that we are great economisers of our expense:  as it weighs, it serves for so much as it weighs.  Our opinion will never suffer it to want of its value:  the price gives value to the diamond; difficulty to virtue; suffering to devotion; and griping to physic.  A certain person, to be poor, threw his crowns into the same sea to which so many come, in all parts of the world, to fish for riches.  Epicurus says that to be rich is no relief, but only an alteration, of affairs.  In truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice.  I will deliver my own experience concerning this affair.