Because what is there, but affairs?

He finds himself praying: this child, his half-formed heart now beating against the stone floor, let him be sanctified by this moment, and let him be like his father’s father, like his Tudor uncles; let him be hard, alert, watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest turn of fortune. If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey’s creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 466-7

I really like this. Not least because Mantel's Cromwell would obviously have wanted any king to be like Henry VII. Mostly, however, I like the vocalisation of the channel that ambition must run for people like Cromwell.