I carry myself like a man; in conduct, like a child. The fear
of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself. The game is not worth
the candle. The covetous man fares worse with his passion than the poor,
and the jealous man than the cuckold; and a man ofttimes loses more by
defending his vineyard than if he gave it up. The lowest walk is the
safest; 'tis the seat of constancy; you have there need of no one but
yourself; 'tis there founded and wholly stands upon its own basis. Has
not this example of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophy
in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth
in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind
how much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and
scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he
married a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for his
money: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not
anything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained those who came
to see him than with this design of his, by which he stopped the private
chattering of mockers, and blunted all the point from this reproach.

As to ambition, which is neighbour, or rather daughter, to presumption,
fortune, to advance me, must have come and taken me by the hand; for to
trouble myself for an uncertain hope, and to have submitted myself to all
the difficulties that accompany those who endeavour to bring themselves
into credit in the beginning of their progress, I could never have done
it:

"Spem pretio non emo."

["I will not purchase hope with ready money," (or),
"I do not purchase hope at a price."
--Terence, Adelphi, ii. 3, 11.]

I apply myself to what I see and to what I have in my hand, and go not
very far from the shore,

"Alter remus aquas, alter tibi radat arenas:"

["One oar plunging into the sea, the other raking the sands."
--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]

and besides, a man rarely arrives at these advancements but in first
hazarding what he has of his own; and I am of opinion that if a man have
sufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born and
brought up, 'tis a great folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of
augmenting it. He to whom fortune has denied whereon to set his foot,
and to settle a quiet and composed way of living, is t