Of Repentance

Others form man; I only report him: and represent a particular one, ill fashioned enough, and whom, if I had to form anew, I should certainly make something else than what he is. But there is no recalling what is done. Now, though I have painted myself in my own colours as well as I could, I have not attempted to hide the least defect or addition. I am grown older by a good many years since my first publications; but I am not sure that I am grown one inch the wiser. I and my book make but one.

I have nothing to excuse my faults withal, since I myself know them, and own them. Every man carries the whole stamp of the human condition within him. Authors communicate with the world in some special and peculiar capacity; I am the first to do so with my being, as Michel de Montaigne, not as grammarian, or poet, or lawyer. If the world finds fault with me for speaking too much of myself, I find fault with the world for not thinking so much of itself.

Every man carries the complete stamp of the human condition within him.

The world is all in motion: all things are perpetually shifting — the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt — both with the universal motion and with their own. Constancy itself is nothing but a slower and more languid motion. I cannot fix my subject: it is always turbulent and reeling with a natural intoxication. I take it in this passage, not a passage from one age to seven years, but from one day to another, from one minute to another. My history must be adapted to the moment. I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. This is a register of various and changeable accidents, and of irresolute, and when it pleases God, contrary imaginations.

I repent not of the things I do; but I repent that I do not things that others may have desired of me. And if others call this obstinacy, I call it the ordinary exercise of my judgment. What I was an hour ago and what I am at this moment are two different creatures, and yet I will not pretend they are strangers to each other. The same thread runs through both, but it tangles; it doubles back; it does not proceed in a straight line. This is what I mean to record. Not a finished portrait, but a thing still moving.