“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Oeuvres complètes de Chamfort, Vol. I (Paris: Chaumerot Jeune, 1824), p. 396. My own translation from the French:
One is happier alone than amongst others. Does this not stem from the fact that, in solitude, one thinks about things, while in society one is forced to think about people?