When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. Nay, and when I walk alone in a beautiful Orchard, if my Thoughts are some part of the Time taken up with strange Occurrences, I some part of the Time call them back again to my Walk, or to the Orchard, to the Sweetness of the Solitude, and to my self. – Michel de Montaigne, “Of Experience,” translated from French by Charles Cotton

I know not what phantom we take for self…. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written. – Mark Twain, Autobiography, 1924