Imagination seethes, excited, Once more its contact has ignited The blood within my withered heart, Once more I love, once more I smart!... - Alexander Pushkin

Whom, then, to love? Whom to believe?
Who is the only one that won't betray us?
Who measures all deeds, all speeches
obligingly by our own foot rule?
Who does not sow slander about us?
Who coddles us with care?
To whom our vice is not so bad?
Who never bores us?
Unlike a futile phantom-seeker
who wastes effort in vain-
love your own self,
my honorworthy reader.
A worthy object! Nothing
more amiable surely exists.

He who has lived and thought can't help
despising people in his soul;
him who has felt disturbs
the ghost of irrecoverable days;
for him there are no more enchantments;
him does the snake of memories,
him does repentance bite.

Rousseau (I’ll note with your permission)
Could not conceive how solemn Grimm
Dared clean his nails in front of him,
The madcap sage and rhetorician.
Champion of rights and liberty,
In this case judged wrong-headedly.
One still can be a man of action
And mind the beauty of one’s nails:
Why fight the age’s predilection?
Custom’s a despot and prevails.