HKB
Where good fortune enters, envy lays siege to her and attacks her, and when she departs sorrow and regret remain behind.
When beauty exists side by side with ugliness, the one seems more powerful, owing to the presence of the other.
He who walks straight rarely falls.
O miserable race of man! of how many things you make yourself the slave for the sake of money!
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.
To speak well of a bad man is the same as speaking ill of a good man.
Truth ordains that lying tongues shall be punished by the lie.
He who does not value life does not deserve it.
The beautiful works of mortals pass and do not endure.
Labour flies with fame almost hidden in its arm.
The gold in ingots is refined in the fire.
{44}
The shuttle says: I will continue to move until the cloth is woven.
Everything that is crooked is straightened.
Great ruin proceeds from a slight cause.
Fine gold is recognized when it is tested.
The image will correspond to the die.
The wall will fall on him who scrapes it.
Ivy lives long.
To the traitor, death is life, because if he makes use of others he is no longer believed.
When fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald.
Constancy means, not he who begins, but he who perseveres.
I do not yield to obstacles.
Every obstacle is overcome by resolve.
He who is chained to a star does not change.
[Sidenote: Truth]
Fire destroys falsehood,--that is to say, sophistry,--and rehabilitates truth, scattering the darkness.
Fire must be represented as the consumer of all sophistry and the revealer of truth, because it is light and scatters darkness which conceals all essences.
Fire destroys all sophistry,--that is to say, deceit,--and preserves truth alone, which is gold. {45} Truth cannot be concealed in the end, dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is frustrated before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask.
There is nothing hidden under the sun. Fire must represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies, and the mask is for sophistry and lies, which conceal truth.
Rather privation of limbs than weariness of doing good. The power of using my limbs shall fail me before the power of being useful. Rather death than weariness. I cannot be satiated with serving. I do not weary of giving help. No amount of work is sufficient to weary me. This is a carnival motto: "Sine lassitudine." Hands in which ducats and precious stones abound like snow never grow weary of serving, but such a service is for its utility only and not for our profit. Nature has formed me thus.
[Sidenote: Ingratitude]
This shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude: The wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. When the sun, the scatterer of darkness, shines, you put out the light which for you in particular, and for your need and convenience, expelled the darkness.
[Sidenote: Physiological Inferiority of Man]