The troubled sea's dark waves surround me,but will rather remind himself of that saying of King Philip, who receiving a fall in a place of wrestling, when he turned himself in rising and saw the print of his body in the dust, exclaimed, Good God! what a small portion of earth has Nature assigned us, and yet we covet the whole world.
And with their horrid noise confound me;
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For if you consider the truth of things, setting aside
vain fancy and opinion, he that has got an agreeable city
to dwell in is a stranger and foreigner to all the rest, for it
seems not reasonable and just, that leaving his own he
should go to dwell in another city. As the proverb is,
‘Sparta is the province fallen to your lot, adorn it,’ though
it should be in no credit or prove unhealthful, though disturbed with seditions, and its affairs in distemper and out
of order. But as for him whom Fortune has deprived of
his own habitation, it gives him leave to go and dwell
where he pleases. That goad precept of the Pythagoreans, ‘Make choice of the best life you can, and custom
will make it pleasant,’ is here also wise and useful. Choose
the best and pleasantest place to live in, and time will
make it thy country, and such a country as will not encumber and distract thee, not laying on thee such commands as these,—Bring in so much money; Go on such
an embassy to Rome; Entertain such a governor; Bear
such a public office. If a prudent person and no way
conceited, calls these things to mind, he will choose to live
in exile in such a sorry island as Gyarus, or in Cynarus
that is ‘so hard and barren and unfit for plantation,’ and
do this without reluctancy, not making such sorrowful complaints as the women do in the poet Simonides:
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 3.
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