It Is An Appalling Thing To Feel

Human Life Is Thus Only An Endless Illusion. Men Deceive And Flatter Each Other. No One Speaks Of Us In Our Presence As He Does When We Are Gone. Society Is Based On Mutual Hypocrisy.

The Mind Must Not Be Forced; Artificial And Constrained Manners Fill It With Foolish Presumption, Through Unnatural Elevation And Vain And Ridiculous Inflation, Instead Of Solid And Vigorous Nutriment.

Those Who Write Against Vanity Want The Glory Of Having Written Well, And Their Readers The Glory Of Reading Well, And I Who Write This Have The Same Desire, As Perhaps Those Who Read This Have Also.

Man Is Clearly Made To Think. It Is His Whole Dignity And His Whole Merit; And His Whole Duty Is To Think As He Ought. And The Order Of Thought Is To Begin With Ourselves, And With Our Author And Our End.

A Few Rules Include All That Is Necessary For The Perfection Of The Definitions, The Axioms, And The Demonstrations, And Consequently Of The Entire Method Of The Geometrical Proofs Of The Art Of Persuading.