Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.