N'ont rien qu'à se vertu l'on puisse comparer.

(Let others more riches and fame,
More virtue and morals possess,
'Twill kindle no envious flame;
But to make my merit seem less
In taste, appetite, is, I claim,
An outrageous thing to profess.
The stomach's the greatest of things,
All else to us nothing brings.
A great heart would all undertake,
A great soul investigate,
But the law of the stomach is good things to digest,
And the glories which are at my age the delight,
True beauty of mind, of courage the height,
Are nothing unless by its virtue they're blest.)

When I was young I admired intellect more than anything else, and was
less considerate of the interests of the body than I should have been;
to-day, I am remedying the error I then held, as much as possible,
either by the use I am making of it, or by the esteem and friendship I
have for it.

You were of the same opinion. The body was something in your youth,
now you are wholly concerned with the pleasures of the mind. I do not
know whether you are right in placing so high an estimate upon it. We
read little that is worth remembering, and we hear little advice that
is worth following. However degenerate may be the senses of the age at
which I am living, the impressions which agreeable objects make upon
them appear to me to be so much more acute, that we are wrong to