Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/172

 the importance of secrecy, and will observe it where they are concerned in the event. To go and tell any friend, wife, or mistress, any secret with which they have nothing to do, is discovering to them such an unretentive weakness as must convince them that you will tell it to twenty others, and consequently that they may reveal it without the risk of being discovered. But a secret properly communicated only to those who are to be concerned in the thing in question, will probably be kept by them, though they should be a good many. Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept. Adieu. [Same date.]

—How trifling soever these things may seem, or really be, in themselves, they are no longer so, when above half the world thinks them otherwise. And, as I would have you ''omnibus ornatum—excellere rebus'', I think nothing above or below my pointing out to you, or your excelling in. You have the means of doing it, and time before you to make use of them. Take my word for it, I ask nothing now but what you will, twenty years hence, most heartily wish that you had done. [Sept. 20, 1748.]

—A gentleman has, probably, read no other Latin than that of the