The whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys's own address. Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by him throughout his diary, to that unflinshing - I had almost said that unintelligent - sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books...Whether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; still that entracing ego of whom alone he cared to write. - Robert Louis Stevenson, 'Samuel Pepys'.

Un livre est le produit d'un autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dons nos habitudes, dans le societe, dans nos vices. - Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve.

[There is] in every one, two men, the wise and the foolish, and... each of them must be allowed his turn. If you would have the wise, the grave, the serious, always to rule and have sway, the fool would grow so peevish and troublesome, that he would put the wise man out of order, and make him fit for nothing: he must have his times of being let loose to follow his fancies, and play his gambols, if you would have your business go on smoothly. - Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftsbury, to John Locke.