A man advanced to greatness, who makes others find their fortune in his, joins a great merit to a great happiness.

There is no character more deservedly esteemed, than that of a country gentleman, who understands the station in which heaven and nature have placed him. He is a father to his tenants, a patron to his neighbours, and is more superior to those of lower fortune, by his benevolence, than his professions. He justly divides his time between solitude and company; so as to use the one for the other his life is employed in the good offices of

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an advocate, a referee, a companion, a mediator, and a friend.

Ingratitude is, of all crimes, that which we are to account the most venial in others, and the most unpardonable in ourselves.

The ungrateful, says Xenophon, are neither fit to serve the gods, their country, nor their friends.

Without good nature and gratitude, men had as well live in a wilderness, as in a civil society.

Friendship is a medicine for all misfortune: but ingratitude dries up the fountain of all good

ness.

He who receives a good turn, should never forget it he who does one, should never remember it.

Cato boasts of this as the great comfort and joy of his old age, That nothing was more pleasant to him, than the consciousness of a well spent life, and the remembrance of many benefits and kindnesses done to others.

It is the character of an unworthy nature to write injuries in marble, and benefits in dust.

He that preaches gratitude, pleads the cause both of God and man; for without it we can be neither sociable nor religious.

So long as we stand in need of a benefit, there is nothing dearer to us; nor any thing cheaper, when we have received it.

It is the glory of gratitude, that it depends only on the will; If I have a will to be grateful, says Seneca, I am so.

An anticipated favor has two perfections: one is the promptitude of it, which obliges the receiver to greater gratitude: and the other, in that the same gift, which coming later, would be a debt, by anticipation is a pure benefit.

True honor, as defined by Cicero, is the concurren approbation of good men; such only being fit to give true praise, who are themselves praiseworthy.

Nobility is to be considered only as an imaginary distinction, unless accompanied with the practice of those generous virtues by which it ought to be obtained. Titles of honor, conferred upon such as have no personal merit to deserve them, are at best but the royal stamp set upon base metal.

Who, says

Great qualities make great men. Seneca, is a gentleman? The man, whom nature has disposed, and as it were cut out for virtue ; this man is well born indeed; for he wants nothing else to make him noble, who has a mind so generous, that he can rise above, and triumph over fortune, let his condition of life be what it will.

It is true greatness that constitutes glory, and

virtue is the cause of both; but vice and ignorance taint the blood; and an unworthy behaviour degrades and disennobles a man more than birth and fortune aggrandize and exalt him.

Virtue is the surest foundation both of reputation and fortune, and the first step to greatness is to be honest.

He that boasts of his ancestors, confesses he has no virtue of his own. No other person has lived for our honour; nor ought that to be reputed ours, which was long before we had a being; for what advantage can it be to a blind man, that his parent had good eyes.

It was a fine compliment made to the emperor Vespasian: Greatness and majesty have changed nothing in you but this, that your power to do good should be answerable to your will.

It is mentioned in history to the honor of the emperor Alexander Severus, that he would in no case permit offices to be sold: For, said he, he who buys must sell: I will not indure any merchandise of authority, which, if I tolerate, I cannot afterward condemn; and I shall be ashamed to

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punish him who sold what I permitted him to buy.

Men must have public minds, as well as salaries or they will serve private ends at the public cost. It was Roman virtue, that raised the Roman glory.

It was a saying of Bias, Magistracy discovers what a man is. For as empty vessels, though they have some crack in them, while they are empty, do not discover their flaws: but when they are filled with liquor, immediately show their defects; so happens it with ill-disposed and corrupt minds, which seldom discover their vices, till they are filled with authority.

A hero should have all good qualities united in him, without affecting any. For what need has a great man of any foreign aid to promote the regard that is due to his merit, when a certain air of noble simplicity, and forgetfulness of his own grandeur, will not fail to attach the public attention: since shutting his eyes upon himself is an infallible way to open all the world's upon him?

If favor places a man above his equals, his fall places him below them.