Pooh! all this is mere learning and translation, and such will never secure immortality.
Translation is at best an echo, and it must be a wonderful echo to be heard after the lapse of a thousand years.

No! all I have already done, and all I may yet do in the same way, I may reckon as nothing--mere pastime; something else must be done.

I must either write some grand original work, or conquer an empire; the one just as easy as the other.
But am I competent to do either?
Yes, I think I am, under favourable circumstances.

Yes, I think I may promise myself a reputation of a thousand years, if I do but give myself the necessary trouble.

Well! but what's a thousand years after all, or twice a thousand years?
Woe is me! I may just as well sit still.
'Would I had never been born!' I said to myself; and a thought would occasionally intrude: But was I ever born?
Is not all that I see a lie--a deceitful phantom?
Is there a world, and earth, and sky?
Berkeley's doctrine--Spinoza's doctrine! Dear reader, I had at that time never read either Berkeley or Spinoza.