It deranges all my measures; it cuts me to the quick.

Ill-luck, which persecutes my old age, has followed me from the Mark [Kunersdorf, in the Mark of Brandenburg] to Saxony.

I will still strive what I can.

The little ODE I sent you, addressed TO FORTUNE, had been written too soon! One should not sing victory till the battle is over.

I am so crushed down by these incessant reverses and disasters, that I wish a thousand times I were dead; and from day to day I grow wearier of dwelling in a body worn out and condemned to suffer.