first likened glory to a shadow did better than he
was aware of; they are both of them things pre-eminently vain glory also,
like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length
infinitely exceeds it. They who instruct gentlemen only to employ their
valour for the obtaining of honour:

"Quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non sit;"

["As though it were not a virtue, unless celebrated"
--Cicero De Offic. iii. 10.]

what do they intend by that but to instruct them never to hazard
themselves if they are not seen, and to observe well if there be
witnesses present who may carry news of their valour, whereas a thousand
occasions of well-doing present themselves which cannot be taken notice
of? How many brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of a
battle? Whoever shall take upon him to watch another's behaviour in such
a confusion is not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall give of
his companions' deportment will be evidence against himself:

"Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo, honestum illud,
quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis positum,
non in gloria, judicat."

["The true and wise magnanimity judges that the bravery which most
follows nature more consists in act than glory."
--Cicero, De Offic. i. 19.]

All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life is that I have lived
it in quiet; in quiet, not according to Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, or
Aristippus, but according to myself. For seeing philosophy has not been
able to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let
every one seek it in particular.

To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown
but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the beginning of
their progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much courage
to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the
first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great dangers I do not
remember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousand
have fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through. An
infinite number of brave actions must be performed without witness and
lost, before one turns to account. A man is not always on the top of a
breach, or at the head of an army, in the sight of his general, as upon a
scaffold; a man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; he
m