They forgive a loved man more stains than we do a loved woman. Hence the romance-writers let the heroes of their quill guzzle, storm, duel, and stay overnight anywhere and everywhere, without the least prejudice to the hero.--The heroine, on the contrary, must sit at home by her mother and be a little angel. * On the whole, they are so delicate, so mild, so sympathetic, so refined, so loving and love-thirsty, that I cannot get it into my head why it is that they cannot really like each other, unless it is for some such reason as this, that they are too courteous to each other to be formally reconciled or formally at variance with each other. You dear ones! you sometimes love a man because he has a friend and is one. O how beautifully would a friend of your own sex _fit_[158] you! * One learns taciturnity best among people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn. * If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge. An amended and purified soul is darkened by the least moral poison, as certain precious stones are by every other, and now after the amendment one observes for the first time how many impurities still lurk in all corners. * I will close with some rules for improvement. Never, when the bosom has to fear that thorn in the side, anger, eloquently represent to any one his faults; for in the very act of convincing him of his guilt thou persuadest thyself of it, and so becomest exasperated. Picture to thyself every morning the possible situations and passions into which during the day thou mayst fall; then thou wilt deport thyself better, for one seldom behaves badly, in a repeated case, the second time.--Is thy friend angry with thee, then provide him an opportunity of showing thee a great favor. Over that his heart must needs melt, and he will love thee again.--No resolves are great save those which one has more than once to execute. Hence _forbearing_ is harder than _undertaking_; for the former has to be kept up longer, and the latter is also linked with the sense of a double expression of power, a psychological and a moral.--Only despair not at a single failing; and let thy whole repentance be--a nobler action.--Only make thyself (by stoicism, or in ally way thou canst) _tranquil_, then wilt thou have little trouble in making thyself _virtuous_ also.--Begin the culture of thy heart, not with the rearing of noble motives, but with the extirpation of bad ones. When the weeds are once withered or uprooted, then will the nobler flowerage spontaneously and vigorously spring up.--The virtuous heart, like the body, grows sound and strong more by _work_ than by good _food_. Therefore I can stop. 13. DOG-POST-DAY.