thing excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some
singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other."
--Burke, {ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL, (1756), Part I, Sect. XVII}.]

{The translators' incorrectly cite SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH
AMERICA. Also, Burke does not actually write "Ambition has been...",
he writes "It has been..." when speaking of ambition.}

51.--Nothing should so much diminish the satisfac-
tion which we feel with ourselves as seeing that we
disapprove at one time of that which we approve of
at another.

52.--Whatever difference there appears in our for-
tunes, there is nevertheless a certain compensation of
good and evil which renders them equal.

53.--Whatever great advantages nature may give,
it is not she alone, but fortune also that makes the
hero.

54.--The contempt of riches in philosophers was
only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the
injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of
which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to
guard themselves against the degradation of poverty,
it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinc-
tion which they could not gain by riches.

["It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior