Of three amiable
nieces she has declared herself an irreconcileable enemy; to one,
because she broke off a tulip with her hoop; to another, because she
spilt her coffee on a Turkey carpet; and to the third, because she let a
wet dog run into the parlour. She has broken off her intercourse of
visits, because company makes a house dirty; and resolves to confine
herself more to her own affairs, and to live no longer in mire by
foolish lenity.
Peevishness is generally the vice of narrow minds, and, except when it
is the effect of anguish and disease, by which the resolution is broken,
and the mind made too feeble to bear the lightest addition to its
miseries, proceeds from an unreasonable persuasion of the importance of
trifles. The proper remedy against it is, to consider the dignity of
human nature, and the folly of suffering perturbation and uneasiness
from causes unworthy of our notice.
He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course
of his life to be interrupted by fortuitous inadvertencies, or offences,
delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that
constancy and equanimity which constitute the chief praise of a wise
man.
The province of prudence lies between the greatest things and the least;
some surpass our power by their magnitude, and some escape our notice by
their number and their frequency.
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