"Nothing weighs less than a pen, nothing is more cheering." And to boot, Petrarch notes, writing will profit others, "sometimes even men of the future, thousands of years away." Thus he concluded: "of all earthly delights none is more noble than literature, none longer-lasting, sweeter, more constant..." He hoped that death would find him "reading or writing, or, if it be Christ's will, praying and weeping" (Letters on Familiar Matters 17.2).