I had all within me that makes contentment of the present, because I had that which can make me forget the present.
I had the power to re-people--to create: the legends and dreams of old--the divine faculty of verse, in which the beautiful superfluities of the heart can pour themselves--these were mine! Petrarch chose wisely for himself! To address the world, but from without the world; to persuade--to excite--to command,--for these are the aim and glory of ambition;--but to shun its tumult, and its toil! His the quiet cell which he fills with the shapes of beauty--the solitude, from which he can banish the evil times whereon we are fallen, but in which he can dream back the great hearts and the glorious epochs of the past.
For me--to what cares I am wedded! to what labours I am bound! what instruments I must use! what disguises I must assume! to tricks and artifice I must bow my pride! base are my enemies--uncertain my friends! and verily, in this struggle with blinded and mean men, the soul itself becomes warped and dwarfish.

Patient and darkling, the Means creep through caves and the soiling mire, to gain at last the light which is the End." In these reflections there was a truth, the whole gloom and sadness of which the Roman had not yet experienced.

However august be the object we propose to ourselves, every less worthy path we take to insure it distorts the mental sight of our ambition; and the means, by degrees, abase the end to their own standard.

This is the true misfortune of a man nobler than his age--that the instruments he must use soil himself: half he reforms his times; but half, too, the times will corrupt the reformer.

His own craft undermines his safety;--the people, whom he himself accustoms to a false excitement, perpetually crave it; and when their ruler ceases to seduce their fancy, he falls their victim.