If a man be fiery,
his motion is so; if angry, it is troubled and violent. So that we
may conclude wheresoever manners and fashions are corrupted,
language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and
apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the wantonness of
language of a sick mind.
De rebus mundanis.--If we would consider what our affairs are
indeed, not what they are called, we should find more evils
belonging to us than happen to us. How often doth that which was
called a calamity prove the beginning and cause of a man's
happiness? and, on the contrary, that which happened or came to
another with great gratulation and applause, how it hath lifted him
but a step higher to his ruin? as if he stood before where he might
fall safely.
Vulgi mores.--Morbus comitialis.--The vulgar are commonly ill-
natured, and always grudging against their governors: which makes
that a prince has more business and trouble with them than ever
Hercules had with the bull or any other beast; by how much they have
more heads than will be reined with one bridle. There was not that
variety of beasts in the ark, as is of beastly natures in the
multitude; especially when they come to that iniquity to censure
their sovereign's actions.
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