There are some qualities in our natures rendered noxious or innoxious by their encounter with others,—just as various medicines lose or receive power by an intermixture. STORMS. Storms in the heart generally make a wreck of peace. QUALITIES. There are as many ruined by their good qualities as enriched by their bad. SATIRE. Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget. FAULTS. Our faults are lessons writ for other men, Who, reading them, are taught at our expense, Nor thank us for the knowledge they attain. Though bought at heavy cost of woe to us. WISDOM. Wisdom is lulled to sleep by pleasure, but awakens at the touch of sorrow. WIT. Those who have no wit are prone to doubt that of others. SELF-KNOWLEDGE. It is by self-knowledge that we prevent the seeds of evil from arising in our minds, and making that a wilderness of weeds which might have become a garden of precious flowers. FRIENDS. It requires sunshine to see our friends, for they become invisible when our horizon is clouded. FRIEND AND WIFE. Give me a friend, within whose well-poised mind Experience holds her seat. But let my bride Be innocent as flowers that fragrance shed, Yet know not they are sweet. ADVICE. Most people seem to imagine that advice, like physic, to do good must be disagreeable. THE FUTURE. A consolation for those who have no other. TIME. Time is a stream in which there is no mooring the barks of life, because there is no casting anchor in it. WRITER. When Inanis writes history, he draws on his imagination; and when he gives us poetry, trusts only to his memory. FALSE APPEARANCES. We cover our actions with a sort of veil, which, like the varnish on pictures, gives them an artificial lustre that serves to soften their defects. PREJUDICES. Few people look on any object as it really is; but regard it through some fantastic prism presented by their own prejudices, which invest it with a false colour. PRIDE. Pride has seldom a just medium; men have either too much or too little of it. An excess, though most offensive to the spectator, is the least injurious to its possessor, for it saves him from the commission of all actions that beget humiliation, while a deficiency continually entails it upon him. PRAISE.