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380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1815
“Heaven protect you from the temptations of this life! Its enjoyments are but of short duration, and one may well say, that there rests on them a curse. In possession they expire; and what is worse, leave behind them a disgust, a disappointment, a bluntness of the faculties for all that is truly praiseworthy and exalted, so that the better and spiritual attributes of our nature are at last utterly destroyed!”
“The approbation, nay, the idolatrous admiration, which has been paid to you by the capricious multitude, who are always in search of novelty, has dazzled you, and you behold yourself in an artificial character, which is not your own, but a deceitful phantom, which will entice you, rapidly into the gulf of perdition. Return, then, into yourself, Medardus – renounce the delusion which thus besets and overpowers you!”
I was struck as if with a thundershock. My breast heaved – my heart beat convulsively – and every pulse and vein throbbed almost audibly.
“In what mortal heart has not this influence of our archenemy raged like a tempest, resisting every impulse of good? But without this conflict, virtue could have no existence – For in what doth virtue consist, but in the triumph (after a hard-fought battle) of good over evil?”