Other related topics at:
Stoicism
All In Your Mind
444. Even-Temperedness;
Superstition
"Do not disturb your mind ... with other hopes and fears than
reason may suggest: if you are pleased with prognostics of good,
you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your
whole life will be a prey to superstition."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
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654. Even-Temperedness
"It is the fate of almost every passion, when it has passed the
bounds of which nature prescribes, to counteract its own purpose.
Too much rage hinders the warrior from circumspection, too much
eagerness of profit hurts the credit of the trader, too much
ardour takes away from the lover that easiness of address with
which ladies are delighted. Thus extravagance, though dictated
by vanity and incited by voluptuousness, seldom procures
ultimately either applause or pleasure."
Johnson: Rambler #53 (September 18, 1750)
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731. Even-Temperedness
"A thousand miseries make silent and invisible inroads on
mankind, and the heart feels innumerable throbs, which never
break into complaint. Perhaps, likewise, our pleasures are for
the most part equally secret, and most are borne up by some
private satisfaction, some internal consciousness, some latent
hope, some peculiar prospect, which they never communicate, but
reserve for solitary hours and clandestine meditation."
Johnson: Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)
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