PREFACE TO THE KING

...though they speak the absolute truth. But those who have diligently and more accurately contemplated these same things in person will confess that they suffer from a great lack and poverty of speech and expression as soon as they desire to pour themselves out oratorically into the full grandeur of these matters. I myself, while lingering for some time this past September in Bratislava original: "Posonio," the Latin name for modern-day Bratislava, then the capital of Royal Hungary in your Hungarian Kingdom, recognized the most brilliant reasons for this, having explored them in various ways as an eyewitness.

Regarding the rarity of this gift (which is indeed small in its physical bulk), I shall speak in as few words as possible. As I search with every effort of my mind, there occurs to me a twofold course of human life, tending toward different purposes, which must be considered in this way (and one of which almost everyone enters). As soon as the race of infancy and childhood is finished, and the stage of youth—which [is the remainder] of life...