Studies in Literature by John Morley
page 60 of 223 (26%)
page 60 of 223 (26%)
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"Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire
for greater benefits to come." "Love of justice is with most of us nothing but the fear of suffering injustice." "Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, a mutual exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always intends to make something." "We have all strength enough to endure the troubles of other people." "Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done, as fear of the ill that may come to us in consequence." And everybody here knows the saying that "In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing." We cannot wonder that in spite of their piquancy of form, such sentences as these have aroused in many minds an invincible repugnance for what would be so tremendous a calumny on human nature, if the book were meant to be a picture of human nature as a whole. "I count Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_," says one critic, "a bad book. As I am reading it, I feel discomfort; I have a sense of suffering which I cannot define. Such thoughts tarnish the brightness of the soul; they degrade the heart." Yet as a faithful presentation of human selfishness, and of you and me in so far as we happen to be mainly |
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