work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context 5587,"",Reading,2005-07-26 00:00:00 UTC,"First. Let our general course of life be active, social, and temperate. Indolence and solitude sound prettily in pastoral poems; but we were made for fellowship, and labour: and if we give ourselves up to idleness, or abandon the society of our fellow-creatures, our lives will be unnatural, and therefore unhappy. Nothing gives so pleasing a variety to life, as Action; and nothing so effectually dissipates painful thoughts, as the countenance and conversation of a friend. Nor with our friends only should we associate: the company of strangers may be of singular use, in sweetening our tempers, and refining our manners. For this requires a more than ordinary attention to all our civilities of social intercourse; it forces the mind into new exertions, which prevent that stagnation of the faculties whereby the fancy is corrupted; it amuses, by offering to our notice a variety of new characters and incidents; and, if we study to make ourselves agreeable, which is nothing more than our acquaintance and influence.--The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imagination.
(V, 200)",,14940,•I've included twice: Rule over Passion and Disease,"""The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imagination.""","",2009-09-14 19:42:21 UTC,Chapter V. The subject of Imagination resumed. Some directions for the Regulation of it.