I entered a little room, with a flaring paper, of the largest pattern, on the walls. Chairs, tables, cheffonier, and sofa, all gleamed with the glutinous brightness of cheap upholstery. On the largest table, in the middle of the room, stood a smart Bible, placed exactly in the centre, on a red and yellow woollen mat; and at the side of the table nearest to the window, with a little knitting-basket on her lap, and a weezing, blear-eyed old spaniel crouched at her feet, there sat an elderly woman, wearing a black net cap and a black silk gown, and having slate-coloured mittens on her hands. Her iron-grey hair hung in heavy bands on either side of her face; her dark eyes looked straight forward, with a hard, defiant, implacable stare. She had full square cheeks, a long, firm chin, and thick, sensual, colourless lips. Her figure was stout and sturdy, and her manner aggressively self-possessed. This was Mrs. Catherick.

Seeking to avoid Scylla, they fall into Charybdis.

Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause for this an many other maladies, the devil’s cushion, as Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal.

If, in conformity to right reason, you transact whatever affairs you have in hand with attention, steadiness, and benevolence, and without suffering any thing foreign to your present purpose to interfere, you pay the same deference to the divine monitor within you, as if you were the next moment to part for ever; if you can thus persevere, inattentive to any thing further, and without shrinking from any difficulty, and act with simplicity and energy, according to the nature of the present business, with an heroic regard to truth in all your words; you will thus secure a happy life.

It is not in the power of any one to prevent your acting thus.

Although you should live three thousand or three myriads of years, yet observe, that no man when he dies loses any more than that instant portion of time in which he then lived; and that he only lives that moment of life which he is constantly losing; so that the longest and the shortest life, in this view, come to the same thing. For the present time is equal to every one, though that which is past may have been unequal.
   But, as the portion of life which we lose at our death is a mere point or instant, it appears from hence, that no one can lose either what is past or what is future. For how can he lose what he does not possess?

If he wants to keep a whole skin on his bones, I recommend him not to come back in a hurry.

But I am over-tedious in these toys, which howsoever, in some men’s too severe censures, they may be held absurd and ridiculous, I am the bolder to insert, as not borrowed from circumforanean rogues and gipsies, but out of the writings of some worthy philosophers and physicians, yet living some of them, and religious professors in famous universities, who are able to patronize that which they have said, and vindicate themselves from all cavillers and ignorant persons.

Why do you suffer yourself thus to be the sport of accidents, and your mind distracted by external objects, and not give yourself leisure to acquire any useful knowledge? and why do you live thus in a perpetual whirl of dissipation?

You will hardly find any man unhappy from being ignorant of what passes in the thoughts of other people; but he that does not attend to the regulation of his own thoughts, must necessarily be miserable.

From my governor (who had the care of the earlier part of my education) I learned not to engage in the disputes of the circus of the amphitheatre, the chariot races, or the combats of the gladiators.

He also taught me to endure hardships and fatigues; and to reduce the conveniences of life into a narrow compass; and to wait on myself on most occasions; not impertinently to interfere in other people’s affairs, nor hastily to listen to calumnies and slander.

Diognetus cautioned me against too eager a pursuit of trifles; particularly, not to busy myself in feeding quails.

And also [taught Rusticus] to read an author with care and attention, and not to content myself with a general superficial view of his subject, nor immediately to resign my opinion to every plausible declaimer.

Apollonius’ living example convinced me, that a man may be rigid in his principles, yet easy and affable in his manners, and free from any moroseness in delivering the precepts of his philosophy.

From the example of Sextus I formed a resolution of living according to Nature, of preserving an unaffected gravity in my deportment, and a careful attention to the expectations of my friends; to bear with the ignorance of the vulgar, and those that take up their opinions at random, without examination.

Fronto the orator informed me, how much envy, intrigue and dissimulation, usually prevailed under tyrannical governments, and observed, that those whom we call nobility are too often void of natural affection and the common feelings of humanity.

I am obliged to Alexander the Platonist, for the hint, ‘not often, nor ever, without a necessity, to complain, either in my letters or in the common intercourse with my friends, of my want of leisure; nor under a pretence of extraordinary embarrassment to decline or evade the common offices of friendship’.

Catulus admonished me not to slight the complaints of a friend, even though they should prove to be without foundation.

As for those things which conduce to the comfort and convenience of life, which fortune amply supplied, he made use of them, when at hand, without pride or ostentation; but, like a wise man, when at a distance, never regretted the want of them.

He was careful of his person, but neither foppish nor negligent; he had a proper regard to his health, but not too anxious in that particular, like a man that was too fond of life.

But to be able to bear affliction with fortitude, and the reverse without being too much elated, is an argument of consummate virtue and invincible resolution.

Out of this nettle danger, I’ll yet pluck the flower safety.