“I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.”

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

“It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.”

“If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: 'Because it was he; because it was me.”

“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”

“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”

“This, reader, is an honest book...I want to appear in my simple, natural and everyday dress, without strain or artifice; for it is myself that I portray”