What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that.

The affair--I mean the affair of life--couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at the best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured--so that one 'takes' the form as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can.

Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory of that illusion.

I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don't quite know which.

Of course at present I'm a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance.