WHEN PARADOXES ARE PERMISSIBLE.--In order to interest clever persons in a theory, it is sometimes only necessary to put it before them in the form of a prodigious paradox. 308. HOW COURAGEOUS PEOPLE ARE WON OVER.--Courageous people are persuaded to a course of action by representing it as more dangerous than it really is. 309. COURTESIES.--We regard the courtesies show us by unpopular persons as offences. 310. KEEPING PEOPLE WAITING.--A sure way of exasperating people and of putting bad thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting long. That makes them immoral. 311. AGAINST THE CONFIDENTIAL.--Persons who give us their full confidence think they hay thereby a right to ours. That is a mistake people acquire no rights through gifts. 312. A MODE OF SETTLEMENT.--It often suffices to give a person whom we have injured an opportunity to make a joke about us to give him personal satisfaction, and even to make him favourably disposed to us. 313. THE VANITY OF THE TONGUE.--Whether man conceals his bad qualities and vices, or frankly acknowledges them, his vanity in either case seeks its advantage thereby,--only let it be observed how nicely he distinguishes those from whom he conceals such qualities from those with whom he is frank and honest. 314. CONSIDERATE.--To have no wish to offend or injure any one may as well be the sign of a just as of a timid nature. 315. REQUISITE FOR DISPUTATION.--He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute. 316. INTERCOURSE AND PRETENSION.--We forget our pretensions when we are always conscious of being amongst meritorious people; being alone implants presumption in us. The young are pretentious, for they associate with their equals, who are all ciphers but would fain have a great significance. 317. MOTIVES OF AN ATTACK.--One does not attack a person merely to hurt and conquer him, but perhaps merely to become conscious of one's own strength. 318. FLATTERY.--Persons who try by means of flattery to put us off our guard in intercourse with them, employ a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping-draught, which, when it does not send the patient to sleep, keeps him all the wider awake. 319. A GOOD LETTER-WRITER.--A person who does not write books, thinks much, and lives in unsatisfying society, will usually be a good letter-writer. 320. THE UGLIEST OF ALL.--It may be doubted whether a person who has travelled much has found anywhere in the world uglier places than those to be met with in the human face. 321. THE SYMPATHETIC ONES.--Sympathetic natures, ever ready to help in misfortune, are seldom those that participate in joy; in the happiness of others they have nothing to occupy them, they are superfluous, they do not feel themselves in possession of their superiority, and hence readily show their displeasure. 322.