Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth.

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

I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to which these sights were the monuments and the remembrances. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.

My own mind began to grow, watchful with anxoius thoughts.

What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.

. . . the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.