The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is
he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him,
the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest
quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the
stroke, for before that come he is dead already. Every man is his master
that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. And he that dare
do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares
not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for
this cause only is more potent with him of the two: and men fall out
with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a
reconcilement. A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the
apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the
room and it. He is a Christian merely for fear of hell-fire; and if any
religion could fright him more, would be of that.
A SORDID RICH MAN
Is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth we may say as of other
men's unthriftiness, that it has brought him to this: when he had
nothing he lived in another kind of fashion. He is a man whom men hate
in his own behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself,
it is but justice, for he deserves it. Every accession of a fresh heap
bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree nearer
starving. His body had been long since desperate, but for the reparation
of other men's tables, where he hoards meats in his belly for a month,
to maintain him in hunger so long.
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