Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 06
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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 06
Literature -- Collections
If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy
family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations
sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.
Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name
create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not
Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign
neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion. Feel
something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in
thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest not under the expired
merits of others; shine by those of thine own. Flame not, like the
central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most
men think there is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.
Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a
living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away
thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To
strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no
laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a
snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring
penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The
rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our
thoughts than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives
amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men
have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions
and movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and twenty
thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not
meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously
solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with
leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let
prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a
furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation; deliberating
delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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