Maxims and Reflections - Softcover

Excerpt: ... is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour. 214 Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy. 215 Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common-sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them. 216 Characters often make a law of their failings. Men who know the world have said that when prudence is only fear in disguise, its scruples cannot be conquered. The weak often have revolutionary sentiments; they think they would be well off if they were not ruled, and fail to perceive that they can rule neither themselves nor others. 217 Common-sense is born pure in the healthy man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a resolute perception and recognition of what is necessary and useful. Practical men and women avail themselves of it with confidence. Where it is absent, both sexes find anything necessary when they desire it, and useful when it gives them pleasure. 218 All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little. 219 The conflict of the old, the existing, the continuing, with development, improvement, and reform, is always the same. Order of every kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid of the one, people destroy the other; and so it goes on for a while, until people perceive that order must be established anew. Classicism and Romanticism; close corporations and freedom of trade; the maintenance of large estates and the division of the land,