ula laudo,
Quum res deficiunt, satis inter vilia fortis
Verum, ubi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem
Hos sapere et solos aio bene vivere, quorum
Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis."

["When means are deficient, I laud a safe and humble condition,
content with little: but when things grow better and more easy, I
all the same say that you alone are wise and live well, whose
invested money is visible in beautiful villas."
--Horace, Ep., i. 15, 42.]

A great deal less would serve my turn well enough. 'Tis enough for me,
under fortune's favour, to prepare myself for her disgrace, and, being at
my ease, to represent to myself, as far as my imagination can stretch,
the ill to come; as we do at jousts and tiltings, where we counterfeit
war in the greatest calm of peace. I do not think Arcesilaus the
philosopher the less temperate and virtuous for knowing that he made use
of gold and silver vessels, when the condition of his fortune allowed him
so to do; I have indeed a better opinion of him than if he had denied
himself what he used with liberality and moderation. I see the utmost
limits of natural necessity: and considering a poor man begging at my
door, ofttimes more jocund and more healthy than I myself am, I put
myself into his place, and attempt to dress my mind after his mode;
and running, in like manner, over other examples, though I fancy death,
poverty, contempt, and sickness treading on my heels, I easily resolve
not to be affrighted, forasmuch as a less than I takes them with so much
patience; and am not willing to believe that a less understanding can do
more than a greater, or that the effects of precept cannot arrive to as
great a height as those of custom. And knowing of how uncertain duration
these accidental conveniences are, I never forget, in the height of all
my enjoyments, to make it my chiefest prayer to Almighty God, that He
will please to render me content with myself and the condition wherein I
am. I see young men very gay and frolic, who nevertheless keep a mass of
pills in their trunk at home, to take when they've got a cold, which they
fear so much the less, because they think they have remedy at hand.
Every one should do in like manner, and, moreover, if they find
themselves subject to some more violent disease, should furnish
themselves with such medicines as may numb and stupefy the part.

The employment a man sh