Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

...Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.

Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.

Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check.

Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea.

It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.

Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.