Ideas are mere instruments with which you should learn to play seasonably, so as to sway men.

In that path, likewise, you will have associates.
"Know, my son, that having attained my age, weary of all else, you will have need of strong sensations.

The sanguinary diversions of revolution will then be for you the same as a love-affair at twenty.
"But I am fatigued, my son, and shall recapitulate.

To be loved by women, to be feared by men, to be as impassive and as imperturbable as a god before the tears of the one and the blood of the other, and to end in a whirlwind--such has been the lot in which I have failed, but which, nevertheless, I bequeath to you.

With your great faculties you, however, are capable of accomplishing it, unless indeed you should fail through some ingrained weakness of the heart that I have noticed in you, and which, doubtless, you have imbibed with your mother's milk.
"So long as man shall be born of woman, there will be something faulty and incomplete in his character.