To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou are bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.

When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?

Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.

But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.