“Having been bred amongst mountains I am always unhappy when in a flat country. Whenever the skirts of the horizon come on a level with myself I feel myself quite uneasy and generally have a headache.(Letter to Sir Walter Scott, 25 July 1802)”

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

“If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.”

“There is a question I have learned to ask myself when I am feeling bothered about others: am I holding myself to the same standard I am demanding of them?”

“There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.”

“No, I slept as I always do when I am bored and have not the courage to amuse myself, or when I am hungry and have not the desire to eat.--The Count of Monte Cristo”