Читать книгу Bewick's Select Fables of Æsop and others - Aesop - Страница 35

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We are always ready to censure Fortune for the ill effects of our own carelessness.

A School-boy, fatigued with play, threw himself down by the brink of a deep pit, where he fell fast asleep. Fortune happening to pass by, saw him in this dangerous situation, and kindly gave him a pat on the shoulder: My dear child, said she, if you had fallen into this pit, I should have borne the blame; though in fact the accident would have been wholly owing to your own carelessness.

Misfortune, said a celebrated Cardinal, is but another word for imprudence. The maxim is by no means absolutely true: certain, however, it is, that mankind suffer more evils from their own imprudence, than from events which it is not in their power to controul.