43
As a wolf resembles a dog, so much does a flatterer, an adulterer, a parasite, resemble a friend. Take heed, therefore, that instead of guardian dogs, you do not inadvertently admit ravening wolves.
44
To seek admiration by adorning one's house with stucco belongs to a tasteless man; but to adorn our characters by the charm of an amiable nature shows at once a lover of beauty and a lover of man.
45
If you chiefly admire little things, you will never be held worthy of great ones; but if you are above little things, you will be held greatly worthy.
46
Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the love of gain, and insolence. Nothing is nobler than magnanimity, meekness, and philanthropy.
47
[We represent] those intractable philosophers who do not think pleasure to be in itself the natural state of man, but merely an incident of those things in which his natural state consists,—justice, moderation, and freedom. Why, then, should the soul rejoice and be glad in the minor blessings of the body, as Epicurus says, and not be pleased with its own good, which is the very greatest? And yet Nature has given me likewise a sense of shame; and I am covered with blushes, when I think I have uttered any indecent expression. This emotion will not suffer me to recognize pleasure as a good and the end of life.
48
The ladies at Rome have Plato’s Republic in their hands, because he allows a community of wives; for they attend merely to the words of the author, and not to his sense. For he does not first order one man and one woman to marry and live together, and then allow a community of wives; but he abolishes that system of marriage, and introduces one of another kind. And, in general, men are pleased in ending out excuses for their own faults. Yet philosophy says it is not fit even to move a finger without 30me reason.
49
It is the rarest pleasures which especially delight us.
50
Once exceed moderation, and the most delightful things may become the most undelightful.
