These mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy.

I will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds dear.

I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.
I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so." Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: "Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! And miscalled, every one.

They are not gifts, but merely lendings.

Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty.