“But if the abberations of foolish youth made me forget suc wise lessons for a time,I have the happiness to sense at last that whatever the inclination one may have toward vice,it is difficult for an education in which the heart is involved to remain forever lost.”

“So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble!”

“I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whoseaccomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present myfellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this manshall be myself.I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one Ihave been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if notbetter, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely inbreaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined afterhaving read this work.Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before thesovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus haveI acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom andveracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed nocrimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluousornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory:I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, buthave never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, Ihave declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous,generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Powereternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of myfellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at mydepravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn exposewith equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, ifhe dare, aver, I was better than that man.”

“I know the feelings of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying the mould in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.”

“I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.”

“Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath,but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, everypart of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Lifeconsists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living.A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all.He would have fared better had he died young.”

“My love for imaginary objects and my facility in lending myself to them ended by disillusioning me with everything around me, and determined that love of solitude which I have retained ever since that time.”