If a man die young he hath left us at dinner; it is bed-time with a man of three score and ten; and he that lives a hundred years hath walked a mile after supper. This life is but one day of three meals, or one meal of three courses—childhood, youth, and old age. To sup well is to live well, and that’s the way to sleep well. _Overbury._ 536. There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads upon the heels of great and unexpected riches. _La Bruyère._ 537. Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by. _Hazlitt._ 538. It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armour-proof against painful emotions; nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer. _Von Humboldt._ 539. Petrarch observes, that we change language, habits, laws, customs, manners, but not vices, not diseases, not the symptoms of folly and madness—they are still the same. And as a river, we see, keeps the like name and place, but not water, and yet ever runs, our times and persons alter, vices are the same, and ever be. Look how nightingales sang of old, cocks crowed, kine lowed, sheep bleated, sparrows chirped, dogs barked, so they do still: we keep our madness still, play the fool still; we are of the same humours and inclinations as our predecessors were; you shall find us all alike, much as one, we and our sons, and so shall our posterity continue to the last. _Burton._ 540. The mother of the useful arts is necessity, that of the fine arts is luxury; for father the former have intellect, the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury. _Schopenhauer._ 541. The fool who knows his foolishness is wise so far, at least; but a fool who thinks himself wise, he is called a fool indeed. _Dhammapada._ 542. He who mixes with unclean things becomes unclean himself; he whose associations are pure becomes purer each day. _Talmud._