Is the man that is commonly most fierce against the coward, and
labouring to take off this suspicion from himself; for the opinion of
valour is a good protection to those that dare not use it. No man is
valianter than he is in civil company, and where he thinks no danger may
come on it, and is the readiest man to fall upon a drawer and those that
must not strike again: wonderful exceptious and cholerick where he sees
men are loth to give him occasion, and you cannot pacify him better than
by quarrelling with him. The hotter you grow, the more temperate man is
he; he protests he always honoured you, and the more you rail upon him,
the more he honours you, and you threaten him at last into a very honest
quiet man. The sight of a sword wounds him more sensibly than the
stroke, for before that come he is dead already. Every man is his master
that dare beat him, and every man dares that knows him. And he that dare
do this is the only man can do much with him; for his friend he cares
not for, as a man that carries no such terror as his enemy, which for
this cause only is more potent with him of the two: and men fall out
with him of purpose to get courtesies from him, and be bribed again to a
reconcilement. A man in whom no secret can be bound up, for the
apprehension of each danger loosens him, and makes him bewray both the
room and it. He is a Christian merely for fear of hell-fire; and if any
religion could fright him more, would be of that.