Taken collectively, the people are a poet, at once author and ardent actor of the part they play, or the part they are made to play. Their excesses c… - François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand

I was simply occupied with tailoring myself to society's standard.

I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth. Having camped in the cabins of Iroquois, and beneath the tents of Arabs, in the wigwams of Hurons, in the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Granada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, among forests and ruins; after wearing the bearskin cloak of the savage, and the silk caftan of the Mameluke, after suffering poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses, only to fall once more into indigence and know imprisonment.

But instead of this peace which I dared to expect, what anguish has weighed down my days! To become the perpetual plaything of fortune, dashed against every strand, long exiled from my country, and finding on my return only a cabin in ruins and friends the grave — such was to be the fate of Chactas.