The Opening of the Confessions — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself. Myself alone. I know my own heart, and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike anyone I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. Whatever I have been, good or bad, I have set down faithfully; I have concealed no crime, added no virtue.