Opuscolum Libellus De Moribus

SMALL WORK II. A SMALL BOOK ON MORALS. I. Every sin is an action. Moreover, every action is voluntary, whether honorable or base; therefore every sin is voluntary. Remove the excuse; no one sins unwillingly. Upbringing and discipline form character; and each person knows what he has learned. Therefore good habit ought to shake off what bad habit has instilled. It makes no difference with what intention you do what is vicious to have done, because deeds are seen, but the mind is not visible. Moreover, there is no praise in not doing what you cannot do. What is most hostile to man? Man. Bear willingly what must be borne; pain is conquered by patience. Wait for what you will never regret. Strive not to please many, but to please the worthy. Apply yourself only to this: that you listen more willingly than you speak. Death, ever at hand, forestalls many who put off living. Therefore let every day be judged as if it were the last. If you can, do not admit sadness; if you cannot, do not show it. Admonish friends in secret, but praise them openly. Words are to be judged by the matter, not by the person. Consider yourself an orator if you have first persuaded yourself of what is fitting before all others. Like unruly slaves of the mind, restrain the tongue, the belly, and lust by command. Tell no one what you wish to remain secret. If you have not commanded yourself, how do you expect silence from another? It is ridiculous to lose one's innocence through hatred of the guilty.

II. Avarice in old age is like a monster. For what is more foolish than, as the saying goes, to increase one's provisions for the journey when the road is failing? The earth receives all infants naked. Are you not ashamed to be born more strongly than to live? What is sweeter than having a friend with whom you dare to speak everything as with yourself? It takes great strength to disregard one who harms you. What you are matters, not what you have. You are not yet happy if the crowd has not mocked you. If you wish to be blessed, first consider this: to despise and to be despised. Before you promise, deliberate; and when you have promised, do it. Act so that no one may justly hate you; and if injury does not make enemies for you, envy makes many. He who wishes to live with the innocent will seek solitude; therefore the best and most beautiful mind is a cultivator of God. You will abstain from another's marriage. You will show piety to parents, indulgence to relatives, fairness to all. You will avoid cruelty, and the handmaiden of cruelty, anger. Do not live one way in solitude, another way in the forum. Ask for nothing that you would have refused; refuse nothing that you would have asked for. You will have peace with men, war with vices. Every passion has this: that into whatever it rages, it thinks others also are mad. The greatest vice is in one who wishes to please not the better, but the many. Do you wish to be known to all? First make it so that you know no one. It is good not to be praised, and to be praiseworthy. It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid.

III. Let men think ill of you, but let them be evil. To displease the wicked is to be praised. Men speak ill of you, but they do not know how to speak well; not because you deserve it, but because it is their habit. Do men speak ill of you? If deservedly, what is troublesome is not what they say, but that they do not lie. If undeservedly? I now rejoice all the more in my innocence; for it is evident that they would charge you with true things if they could. Are you not in your own country? Your country is wherever you are well; for that by which you are well is not in a place, but in a person. Nothing is great unless you despise it with a great spirit. What are the greatest riches? Not to desire riches. Who has the most? He who desires the least. What is it to give a benefit? To imitate God. It is more honorable to love after you have judged than to judge after you have loved. Let dissension begin from another, but reconciliation from you. Succor the poverty of your friends, indeed anticipate it. Friends are provided by prosperity, but most certainly proven by adversity. Hidden hatreds are worse than open ones. Therefore, an enemy who speaks less offends you more than one who is silent. It is a strange reason that does not wish to be proclaimed what it rejoices to be understood. He loves to be forgiven who shows what he hates. Almsgiving benefits not so much those who receive as those who give. And the hope of reward is the solace of labor. What is the greatest poverty? Avarice. One must command money, not serve it. Fear no confidant of your sins more than yourself. You can flee another, but never yourself. Who is poor? He who seems so to himself.

He who is feared by many fears many. Raise up the unfortunate; humble good fortune. True happiness is innocence. Wickedness is its own punishment. A bad conscience is often safe; he who will think of the outcome is secure. One must never forget a benefit received; one given, immediately. IV. A dishonorable victory is to conquer one’s own. It is enough punishment to have been able to punish. Take up enmities slowly; practice friendships with moderation. Lay aside quarrels. Speech is the image of the mind. As the man is, so is his speech. A great thing is the tempering of voice and silence. He who mingles with evil men with a calm mind is evil. Praise no one; accuse no one quickly: always think that you are giving testimony before the gods. It is a vice to believe everything; it is a vice to believe nothing. One should use wealth, not abuse it. Think no place is without a witness. To seek an excuse is a vice. He is stronger who conquers desire than he who subdues an enemy. It is most difficult to conquer oneself. He is unjustly angry who is angry with his own. Begin to love as if it were not permitted to cease. Even if there is no success in great undertakings, the attempt itself is honorable. Nobility of mind is generosity of feeling; nobility of body is a generous mind. More honorable is he whom old age has brought to leisure than he whom it finds in leisure and who then begins to work. A sick mind offers a shameful spectacle. Never let your face be sad at another’s inconvenience. I am a man: how shall I avoid the envy of secondary things?

If you boast of happiness, you will be rich with many. How shall I best protect my power? By the powerlessness of opportunity. Confession holds the place nearest to innocence. Where there is confession, there is remission. Severity in anger is a vice. It is the duty of a good judge to determine not only what is to be condemned, but to what extent. The nearest measure to justice is severity. V. Men would lead a very quiet life on earth if these two words were removed from the nature of all things: mine and yours. He who fears poverty is to be feared. Let your friends feel your strength more through benefits than through injuries. Money does not satisfy avarice, but irritates it. A man always in need of money knows how to conform to its ways. Believe me, you cannot be both rich and happy. Use your ears more often than your tongue. Whatever you are about to say, say it to yourself before you say it to others. There is no difference between an angry man and a madman, except that one day the former is not always angry, the latter is always mad. You will very easily be good if you avoid those things which you have censured. When you fear others, fear yourself; for you can often be without others, but never without yourself. If you have instructed yourself well, be ashamed to do worse things. What you persuade will be lasting; what you compel will be temporary. Always forgive another, never yourself. You will add as much to virtue as you subtract from pleasure. It is foolish to be delighted by sleep and to plot death as if it were near. He harms the good who spares the wicked. Many, when they speak ill of others, do injury to themselves.

Nothing is more shameful than to reproach another with what could be reproached to oneself. Like licentious slaves of the mind, rule your tongue, your lust, your belly with authority; and suppress desire: if you cannot, relax a little. Often those things which reason could not heal have been healed by time. He who dies for love of money and lust shows that he never lived for his own sake. Do not speak shameful things, for modesty is gradually shattered by words. Live so that the master is praised rather than the house: innocence is a matter of habit. It is not condemnation, but the cause, that makes a man shameful. To be deservedly condemned is a punishment; undeserved condemnation is the calamity of the condemner. VI. If you have thought something, it will quickly appear to those who associate with you. Do you wish to be seen by all? The pretense of good honesty is never long. What you deal with concerning others, you judge from your own affairs. Many are to be obliged, few offended; for the memory of benefits is easy, that of injuries tenacious. Always mix something gentle with reproof; for words that go by a soft path penetrate more easily than harsh ones; for no one changes himself because he despairs of changing himself. Whenever you are about to say something in writing, know that you are giving men a handwriting of your character. He who is angry and cruel to slaves shows sufficiently that power against others has failed him. He who does not know how to be silent does not know how to speak. It is easier for a poor man to escape contempt than for a rich man to escape envy. The good man enjoys a good conscience. For evil men, the safest thing is to flee quickly.

No house is so small that it cannot hold many friends. To know how to use poverty is the greatest happiness. Application sharpens the mind; relaxation breaks it. A crime must never be overcome by a crime. A good man is one who has brought his mind to such a state that he not only does not wish to sin, but is also unable to. Those who rule are in much greater danger than those who are judged; the latter fear individuals, the former fear everyone. Will the strong man boast of his strength, whom bodily sickness makes weak? Will the rich man boast of his wealth, whose hope a thief or a tyrant has cut off? Will the nobleman boast of his lineage, sometimes serving the unworthy and wretched? The devil once boasted as the destroyer of your mercy; now he groans as a companion of your blessedness. Things to be avoided by all means and cut off with fire and sword, and separated by every art, are: languor from the body, ignorance from the mind, luxury from the spirit, sedition from the city, discord from the home, intemperance from all things. Someone said that all things are common among friends, and that a friend is another self. The greatest care should be taken for two times: for what we are about to do, and for what we have done. After God, truth is to be cultivated, which alone makes men nearest to the gods.