The vanity of this mortal life, or, Of man, considered only in his present…

What serious person? who that is not in love with impertinency and foolery, would much regret it, to close his eyes, to have the Curtains drawn, and bid goodnight to the world, without ever wishing to see the morning of such another day! And even they that have the world most in their power, and can command what they please for the gratifying of their appetites, without the contradiction and control of others, What can they enjoy more to morrow than they did yesterday? or the next year than this? Is it so much worth the while to live, to see a few more persons bow the knee? To extend power a little further? To make another essay what pleasure sense can taste in some or other hitherto unexperimented Rarity? What more peculiar gusto this or that thing will afford? and try the other Dish? or to renew the same relishes over again?

What serious person? who that is not in love with impertinency and foolery, would much regret it, to close his eyes, to have the Curtains drawn, and bid goodnight to the world, without ever wishing to see the morning of such another day! And even they that have the world most in their power, and can command what they please for the gratifying of their appetites, without the contradiction and controll of others, What can they enjoy more to morrow than they did yesterday? or the next year than this? Is it so much worth the while to live, to see a few more persons bow the knee? To extend power a little further? To make another essay what pleasure sense can tast in some or other hitherto unexperimented Rarity? What more peculiar gusto this or that thing will afford? and try the other Dish? or to renew the same relishes over again?

He whose creative fancy could make him golden Mountains in a dream, create him a Prince of Nations, give him to enjoy the most delicious pleasures of the world in Idea; might, with some plausible show of reason, be deemed the happier man, than he that hath, and is all this indeed: for his toil is less, and his victories unbloody, his pleasures not so impure. However, one would think that to such whose utmost attainments end only in the pleasure of their sense, and have but this Epiphonema, Now, let us sit down, eat, drink, and be merry; A little time might suffice for business of no more weight; and that no man, after he hath once seen the course of the world, and tasted of its best delicacies, should greatly wish for a renewal, or long-continued repetition of so fulsome vanities.