🚀 go-pugleaf

not by authority; as a tyrant,
not as a king.

16. Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way (1) that those to
whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that
they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly
to reflection upon it.

It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between
the head and the heart of those to whom we speak, on the one hand, and, on
the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. This
assumes that we have studied well the heart of man so as to know all its
powers and, then, to find the just proportions of the discourse which we
wish to adapt to them. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are
to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our
discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we
can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to
surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple
and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which
is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to
the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.

17. Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

18. When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there
should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for
example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the
progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is restless curiosity
about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be
in error as to be curious to no purpose.

The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote is the
most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftenest
quoted, because it is entirely composed of thoughts born fro