Authors:
  • I fear I shall never be...good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.

    Letter to Catherine, Lady Hamilton, April 1781; cited from "The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill" by Lewis Melville, London: William Heinemann, (p. 92), 1910.