T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.3
Book iii. Chap. vii. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness.
We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.4
Note 4. Lactantius: Divin. Instit. iii. 28. [back]
Note 5. Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of great design as of chance.Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld: Maxim 57. [back]