"The famous precept of the Stoic philosophers," he said to me, "'Sequere Deum', can be perfectly explained by these words: 'Give yourself up to whatever fate offers to you, provided you do not feel an invincible repugnance to accept it.'" It was ridiculous, of course; but when does man cease to be so? We get rid of our vices more easily than of our follies. A CLERIC IN NAPLES [JC#2][jccln10.xxx]2952 Suffering is inherent in human nature; but we never suffer without entertaining the hope of recovery, or, at least, very seldom without such hope, and hope itself is a pleasure. If it happens sometimes that man suffers without any expectation of a cure, he necessarily finds pleasure in the complete certainty of the end of his life; for the worst, in all cases, must be either a sleep arising from extreme dejection, during which we have the consolation of happy dreams or the loss of all sensitiveness. But when we are happy, our happiness is never disturbed by the thought that it will be followed by grief. Therefore pleasure, during its active period, is always complete, without alloy; grief is always soothed by hope. If this and if that, and every other if was conjured up to torment my restless and wretched brain. People did not want to know things as they truly were, but only as they wished them to be. MILITARY CAREER [JC#3][jcmcr10.xxx]2953 It is well known that the first result of anger is to deprive the angry man of the faculty of reason, for anger and reason do not belong to the same family. Acting on the political axiom that "neglected right is lost right,".... If you would relish pleasure you must endure pain, and delights are in proportion to the privations we have suffered. In matters of love, as well as in all others, Time is a great teacher. Love is a sort of madness, I grant that, but a madness over which philosophy is entirely powerless; it is a disease to which man is exposed at all times, no matter at what age, and which cannot be cured, if he is attacked by it in his old age. RETURN TO VENICE [JC#4][jcrvn10.xxx]2954 I saw how easy it must have been for the ancient heathen priests to impose upon ignorant, and therefore credulous mankind. I saw how easy it will always be for impostors to find dupes, and I realized, even better than the Roman orator, why two augurs could never look at each other without laughing; it was because they had both an equal interest in giving importance to the deceit they perpetrated, and from which they derived such immense profits. I excited her pity. I saw clearly that she no longer loved me; pity is a debasing feeling which cannot find a home in a heart full of love, for that dreary sentiment is too near a relative of contempt. When we can feel pity, we love no longer, but a feeling of pity succeeding love is the characteristic only of a great and generous mind. MILAN AND MANTUA [JC#5][jcmmn10.xxx]2955