Having only that one hope, the accomplishment of it, of consequence, must put an end to all my hopes; and what a wretch is he who must survive his hopes! Nothing remains when that day comes, but to sit down and weep like Alexander, when he wanted other worlds to conquer.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Having only that one hope, the accomplishment of it, of consequence, must put an end to all my hopes; and what a wretch is he who must survive his hopes! Nothing remains when that day comes, but to sit down and weep like Alexander, when he wanted other worlds to conquer." in the context of "William Congreve, in words for the character Fainall in Way of the World (1700)
• Variants on this theme:
• Then he sat down and wept because there were not other worlds for him to conquer.
 • James Baldwin's Thirty More Famous Stories Retold (1905)
• He cried because there were no more worlds to conquer.
 • Twilight Zone episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" (1963)
• And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
 • "Hans Gruber" in Die Hard (1988); this is sometimes mistaken as a quote from more ancient sources; Hans claims it is from Plutarch, who wrote Life of Alexander. While ancient sources record that Alexander sat and wept because he had conquered the known world, the actual wording of this quote is the same as the Twilight Zone episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" (1963)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.