ng life should be either shy or bold; a solemn and
sedate manner usually degenerates into impertinence.

496.--Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.

497.--It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be
pretty unless young.

498.--Some persons are so frivolous and fickle that they are as far
removed from real defects as from substantial qualities.

499.--We do not usually reckon a woman's first flirtation until she has
had a second.

500.--Some people are so self-occupied that when in love they find a
mode by which to be engrossed with the passion without being so with the
person they love.

501.--Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more by its ways than by
itself.

502.--A little wit with good sense bores less in the long run than much
wit with ill nature.

503.--Jealousy is the worst of all evils, yet the one that is least
pitied by those who cause it.

504.--Thus having treated of the hollowness of so many apparent virtues,
it is but just to say something on the hollowness of the contempt for
death. I allude to that contempt of death which the heathen boasted they
derived from their unaided understanding, without the hope of a future
state. There is a difference between meeting death with courage and
despising it. The first is common enough, the last I think always
feigned. Yet everything that could be has been written to persuade us
that death is no evil, and the weakest of men, equally with the bravest,
have given many noble examples on which to found such an opinion, still
I do not think that any man of good sense has ever yet believed in it.
And the pains we take to persuade others as well as ourselves amply show
that the task is far from easy. For many reasons we may be disgusted
with life, but for none may we despise it. Not even those who commit
suicide regard it as a light matter, and are as much alarmed and
startled as the rest of the world if death meets them in a different
way than the one they have selected. The difference we observe in the
courage of so great a number of brave men, is from meeting death in a
way different from what they imagined, when it shows itself nearer
at one time than at another. Thus it ultimately happens that having
despised death when they were ignorant of it, they dread it when they
become acquainted with it. If we could avoid seeing it with all its
surroundings, we might perhaps believe that it was not