Re: a lot of cosmetic endless semi-final discusses suggestions up Aneyd's recent departure

January 15, 2008

Re: a lot of cosmetic endless semi-final discusses suggestions up Aneyd's recent departure

it; whereas

if they said that they predict good fortune, they would often be wrong. They

attribute good fortune only to rare conjunctions of the heavens; so they

seldom fail in prediction.

174. Misery.--Solomon and Job have best known and best spoken of the misery

of man; the former the most fortunate, and the latter the most unfortunate

of men; the former knowing the vanity of pleasures from experience, the

latter the reality of evils.

175. We know ourselves so little that many think they are about to die when

they are well, and many think they are well when they are near death,

unconscious of approaching fever, or of the abscess ready to form itself.

176. Cromwell was about to ravage all Christendom; the royal family was

undone, and his own for ever established, save for a little grain of sand

which formed in his ureter. Rome herself was trembling under him; but this

small piece of gravel having formed there, he is dead, his family cast down,

all is peaceful, and the king is restored.

177. Three hosts. Would he who had possessed the friendship of the King of

England, the King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden, have believed he would

lack a refuge and shelter in the world?

178. Macrobius: on the innocents slain by Herod.

179. When Augustus learnt that Herod's own son was amongst the infants under

two years of age, whom he had caused to be slain, he said that it was better

to be Herod's pig than his son. Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii. 4.

180. The great and the humble have the same misfortunes, the same griefs,

the same passions; but the one is at the top of the wheel, and the other

near the centre, and so less disturbed by the same revolutions.

181. We are so unfortunate

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