Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
A Friend and Enemy, When Most Dangerous
Owen Felltham (1602?–1668)
From Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political
I
WILL take heed both of a speedy friend and a slow enemy. Love is never lasting which flames before it burns; and hate, like wetted coals, throws a fiercer heat when fire gets the mastery. As quick wits have seldom sound judgments which should make them continue: so friendship kindled suddenly is rarely found to consist with the durability of affection. Enduring love is ever built on virtue, which no man can see in another at once. He that fixes upon her shall find a beauty which will every day take him with some new grace or other. I like that love which, by a soft ascension, by degrees possesses itself of the soul. As for an enemy who is long a making, he is much the worse for being ill no sooner. He hates not without cause who is unwilling to hate at all.
