“We often say in the battle of life as in the game of chess—Had I only played this, and not that!”

Comparing regret over past choices to replaying a game whose later moves would also change · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XXIV

• Memory
• Time

“These little white clouds rise and set when the sky of childhood is blue and calm.”

Using a gentle natural image for the fleeting attachments of childhood · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

• Childhood
• Memory
• Nature

“To write one's mental history is too difficult as well as too dreadful.”

Recognising the difficulty and discomfort of complete self-examination · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Truth

“To destroy it altogether would be like consigning some part of myself to a premature grave.”

Treating written memory as a surviving portion of the self · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Mortality

“The best excuse for them is to be found in the pleasure they may afford, the luxury of again experiencing early emotions and scenes, however faintly.”

Valuing autobiography for the recovered sensation of vanished experience · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Time

“I come to the conviction that autobiographic writings may be instructive to others; not to the writers.”

Suggesting that autobiography may reveal more to readers than to its author · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Truth

“The difficulty in separating the really important from the merely apparently important has always precipitately brought my efforts to an end.”

Recognising how hard it is to judge significance in retrospect · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Truth

“The scenery of my own journey, in short—waifs and strays, the finger-posts and milestones of the time past.”

Seeing memory as a landscape marked by fragments and milestones · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Memory
• Time