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"This conduct may be safe, but there is something ungenerous and cowardly in it; to keep their forces, like an over-cautious commander, in fastnesses, and fortified towns, while they suffer the enemy to waste and ravage the country. Praise is indeed due to him, who can any way preserve his integrity; but surely the heart that can retain it, even while it opens to all the warmth of social feeling, will be an offering more acceptable in the eye of heaven."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Author

The Man of the World

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell

Date

1773

Metaphor

"This conduct may be safe, but there is something ungenerous and cowardly in it; to keep their forces, like an over-cautious commander, in fastnesses, and fortified towns, while they suffer the enemy to waste and ravage the country. Praise is indeed due to him, who can any way preserve his integrity; but surely the heart that can retain it, even while it opens to all the warmth of social feeling, will be an offering more acceptable in the eye of heaven."

Metaphor in Context

But as their novelty at first delighted, their frequency at last subdued him; his mind began to accustom itself to the hurry of thoughtless amusement, and to feel a painful vacancy, when the bustle of the scene was at any time changed for solitude. The unrestrained warmth and energy of his temper, yielded up his understanding to the company of fools, and his resolutions of reformation to the society of the dissolute, because it caught the fervor of the present moment, before reason could pause on the disposal of the next; and, by the industry of Sindall, he found, every day, a set of friends, among whom the most engaging were always the most licentious, and joined to every thing which the good detest, every thing which the unthinking admire. I have often indeed been tempted to imagine, that there is something unfortunate, if not blamable, in that harshness and austerity, which virtue too often assumes; and have seen, with regret, some excellent men, the authority of whose understanding, and the attraction of whose wit, might have kept many a deserter under the banners of goodness, lose all that power of service, by the unbending distance which they kept from the little pleasantries and sweetnesses of life. This conduct may be safe, but there is something ungenerous and cowardly in it; to keep their forces, like an over-cautious commander, in fastnesses, and fortified towns, while they suffer the enemy to waste and ravage the country. Praise is indeed due to him, who can any way preserve his integrity; but surely the heart that can retain it, even while it opens to all the warmth of social feeling, will be an offering more acceptable in the eye of heaven.
(pp. 135-137)