It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.

...we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves - such a friend ought to be - do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.

Once a king ... it was impossible, without risk of life, to sink to a private station.

We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed, so that we slide from the summit of our wishes and find ourselves where we were.

But soon, I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.

From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.