you must mend
your manners. This is not a world to live at random in, as you do. To
avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are for ever exposing
us, you must learn to look forward before you take a step, which may
interest our peace. Every thing in this world is matter of calculation.
Advance, then, with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one
scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the
other the pains which are to follow, and see which preponderates. The
making an acquaintance is not a matter of indifference. When a new
one is proposed to you, view it all round. Consider what advantages it
presents, and to what inconveniences it may expose you. Do not bite at
the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. The
art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who
steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset. Pleasure
is always before us; but misfortune is at our side: while running after
that, this arrests us. The most effectual means of being secure
against pain, is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own
happiness. Those which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a
wise man will count on; for nothing is ours, which another may deprive
us of. Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Ever in
our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we
ride serene and sublime above the concerns of this mortal world,
contemplating truth and nature, matter and motion, the laws which bind
up their existence, and that Eternal Being, who made and bound them up
by those laws. Let this be our employ. Leave the bustle and tumult of
society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and
the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why
enter then as volunteers into those of another? Is there so little
gall poured into our cup, that we must heed help to drink that of our
neighbor? A friend dies, or leaves us: we feel as if a limb was cut off.
He is sick: we must watch over him, and participate of his pains. His
fortune is shipwrecked: ours must be laid under contribution. He loses a
child, a parent, or a partner: we must mourn the loss as if it were our
own.

Heart. And what more sublime delight, than to mingle tears with one whom
the hand of Heaven hath smitten! to watch over the bed of sic