polite society:

'Quoecunque dixi, si placuerint, dictavit auditor.'

Should there be a few intruders whom I can not prevent from perusing my
Memoirs, I must find comfort in the idea that my history was not written
for them.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy
them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now
past, and which I no longer feel. A member of this great universe, I
speak to the air, and I fancy myself rendering an account of my
administration, as a steward is wont to do before leaving his situation.
For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would
have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other
hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the
more it keeps silent. I know that I have lived because I have felt, and,
feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I
shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any
doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before
me that I was dead.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my
memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age
of eight years and four months. Before that time, if to think is to live
be a true axiom, I did not live, I could only lay claim to a state of
vegetation. The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made
in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence