Sorrow had not taught me the knowledge of self.

I had yet to learn that religion alone can do that.

My soul was grovelling in the dust; my thoughts wholly engrossed by the world.

Religion was to me a well-invented fable, skillfully constructed, and admirably told, being beautiful and artistic in a literary point of view, but altogether too shallow to satisfy the reason of a clever fellow like me.

Oh! how repugnant are its pure precepts to those whose hearts are blinded by vanity; who live but for the pleasures of the day, and never heed the to-morrow in the skies.
"I sat down at a table near my friend, and began hastily to turn over the pages of a volume which lay before me.