He sat before me like a statue, whose eye alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile." "I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the use of opium, or rather the abuse of it.

I can only say, that the substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition.

The world has now no enticements for me; society no charms.

Love, fame, wealth, honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all shadows; and why should I grasp at them?
In the solitude of my own thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full gauge of their hollow vanities.

No, leave me to myself, or rather to that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to which my daily opiate invites me.