Quotes on Even-Temperedness
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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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