You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.

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

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.

...if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.

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 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.