"Life is no more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his consistency to the last."--Junius.] 257.--Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to conceal the want of mind. ["Gravity is the very essence of imposture."--Shaftesbury, Characteristics, p. 11, vol. I. "The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind."--Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol. I., chap. ii.] 258.--Good taste arises more from judgment than wit. 259.--The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. 260.--Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed polite. 261.--The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love. 262.--There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own. 263.--What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which we like more than that we give away. 264.--Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. We help others that on like occasions we may be helped ourselves, and these services which we render, are in reality benefits we confer on ourselves by anticipation. ["Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befal himself{;} and therefore is called compassion."--Hobbes' Leviathan{, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.] 265.--A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see. ["Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong." Dryden, Absalom And Achitophel{, line 547}.] 266.--We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues. 267.--A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime. 268.--We credit judges with the meanest motives, and yet we desire our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or pre-occupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us--and yet 'tis only to make these men decide in our favour that we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life. 269.--No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does. 270.--One honour won is a surety for more.