From “Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words.”

FORTUNE has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who certainly cannot help themselves.

  In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great—a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins and on the confines of the grave; a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnificence.

  There is this difference between those two temporal blessings, health and money: money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all his money for health.

  To know a man, observe how he wins his object rather than how he loses it; for when we fail our pride supports us; when we succeed it betrays us.

  After hypocrites, the greatest dupes the devil has are those who exhaust an anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and live miserably and meanly, only to die magnificently and rich. For, like the hypocrites, the only disinterested action these men can accuse themselves of is that of serving the devil, without receiving his wages; for the assumed formality of the one is not a more effectual bar to enjoyment than the real avarice of the other. He that stands every day of his life behind a counter, until he drops from it into the grave, may negotiate many very profitable bargains; but he has made a single bad one, so bad indeed that it counterbalances all the rest; for the empty foolery of dying rich, he has paid down his health, his happiness, and his integrity; since a very old author observes that “as mortar sticketh between the stones, so sticketh fraud between buying and selling.” Such a worldling may be compared to a merchant who should put a rich cargo into a vessel, embark with it himself, and encounter all the perils and privations of the sea, although he was thoroughly convinced beforehand that he was only providing for a shipwreck at the end of a troublesome and tedious voyage.

  Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.

  It is an unfortunate thing for fools, that their pretensions should rise in an inverse ratio with their abilities, and their presumption with their weakness; and for the wise, that diffidence should be the companion of talent, and doubt the fruit of investigation.

  Were a plain, unlettered man, but endowed with common sense and a certain quantum of observation and of reflection, to read over attentively the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, without any note or comment, I hugely doubt whether it would enter into his ears to hear, his eyes to see, or his heart to conceive the purport of many ideas signified by many words ending in ism, which nevertheless have cost Christendom rivers of ink and oceans of blood.

  Should the world applaud, we must thankfully receive it as a boon; for if the most deserving of us appear to expect it as a debt, it will never be paid. The world, it has been said, does as much justice to our merits as to our defects, and I believe it; but, after all, none of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance, if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried.

  Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive.

  We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions, when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions, when performed by ourselves.

  As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

  Few things are more destructive of the best interests of society than the prevalent but mistaken notion that it requires a vast deal of talent to be a successful knave. For this position, while it diminishes that odium which ought to attach to fraud on the part of those who suffer by it, increases also the temptation to commit it on the part of those who profit by it; since there are so many who would rather be written down knaves than fools. But the plain fact is, that to be honest with success requires far more talent than to be a rogue, and to be honest without success requires far more magnanimity; for trick is not dexterity, cunning is not skill, and mystery is not profoundness. The honest man proposes to arrive at a certain point, by one straight and narrow road that is beset on all sides with obstacles and with impediments. He would rather stand still than proceed by trespassing on the property of his neighbor, and would rather overcome a difficulty than avoid it by breaking down a fence. The knave, it is true, proposes to himself the same object, but arrives at it by a very different route. Provided only that he gets on, he is not particular whether he effects it where there is a road, or where there is none; he trespasses without scruple, either on the forbidden ground of private property, or on those bypaths where there is no legal thoroughfare; what he cannot reach over he will overreach, and those obstacles he cannot surmount by climbing, he will undermine by creeping, quite regardless of the filth that may stick to him in the scramble. The consequence is that he frequently overtakes the honest man, and passes by him with a sneer. What then shall we say? that the rogue has more talent than the upright? let us rather say that he has less. For wisdom is nothing more than judgment exercised on the true value of things that are desirable; but of things in themselves desirable, those are the most so that remain the longest. Let us therefore mark the end of these things, and we shall come to one conclusion, the fiat of the tribunal both of God and of man,—that honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that virtue has no other reward, because they have heard that she is her own.

  Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves, founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. Vanity can also feed upon externals, but pride must have more or less of that which is intrinsic; the proud therefore do not set so high a value upon wealth as the vain, neither are they so much depressed by poverty. Vanity looks to the many and to the moment, pride to the future and the few; hence pride has more difficulties, and vanity more disappointments; neither does she bear them so well for she at times distrusts herself, whereas pride despises others. For the vain man cannot always be certain of the validity of his pretensions, because they are often as empty as that very vanity that has created them; therefore it is necessary for his happiness, that they should be confirmed by the opinion of his neighbors, and his own vote in favor of himself he thinks of little weight, until it be backed by the suffrages of others. The vain man idolizes his own person, and here he is wrong; but he cannot bear his own company, and here he is right. But the proud man wants no such confirmations; his pretensions may be small, but they are something, and his error lies in overrating them. If others appreciate his merits less highly, he attributes it either to their envy, or to their ignorance, and enjoys in prospect that period when time shall have removed the film from their eyes. Therefore the proud man can afford to wait, because he has no doubt of the strength of his capital, and can also live, by anticipation, on that fame which he has persuaded himself that he deserves. He often draws indeed too largely upon posterity, but even here he is safe; for should the bills be dishonored, this cannot happen until that debt which cancels all others shall have been paid.

  If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;—all that runs over will be yours.

  When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.

  Many schemes ridiculed as Utopian, decried as visionary, and declaimed against as impracticable, will be realized the moment the march of sound knowledge has effected this for our species: that of making men wise enough to see their true interests, and disinterested enough to pursue them.

  There is this of good in real evils, they deliver us while they last from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.