"But all these details are but abominable egotism!" "No doubt, and what is this book, but an abominable egotism!" [...] If this book be boring, in tw… - Stendhal

"But all these details are but abominable egotism!"
"No doubt, and what is this book, but an abominable egotism!" [...] If this book be boring, in two years it shall wrap butter at the grocer's; if it bore not, one shall see that egotism, but a sincere one, is a way of painting the human heart on the knowledge of which we have made a giant's steps since 1721, time of the Persian Letters of this man I've studied so much—Montesquieu.