I left my country for twenty years, and lived an idle and hopeless man in the various courts of the Continent.
At the age of fifty I returned to England; the wounds of the past had not disappeared, but they were scarred over; and I longed, like the rest of my species, to have an object in view.

At that age, if we have seen much of mankind and possess the talents to profit by our knowledge, we must be one of two sects,--a politician or a philosopher.

My time was not yet arrived for the latter, so I resolved to become the former; but this was denied me, for my vanity had assumed a different shape.

It is true that I cared no longer for the reputation women can bestow; but I was eager for the applause of men, and I did not like the long labour necessary to attain it.

I wished to make a short road to my object, and I eagerly followed every turn but the right one, in the hopes of its leading me sooner to my goal.
The great characteristic of a vain man in contradistinction to an ambitious man, his eternal obstacle to a high and honourable fame, is this: he requires for any expenditure of trouble too speedy a reward; he cannot wait for years, and climb, step by step, to a lofty object; whatever he attempts, he must seize at a single grasp.