If you adopt such principles as these, they will reconcile you with others and yourself; you will neither praise nor blame yourself for what you are.
To reproach others with nothing, to repent yourself of nothing--these are the two first steps towards wisdom; this is the philosophy that reconciles us with the human race and with life.[228] When he was in the very midst of all the toil and strife that the Encyclopaedia brought upon him, he could not refuse to spend three whole days in working like a galley-slave at an account of an important discovery that had been made by some worthy people with whom he was acquainted slightly.

"But while I was busy about their affairs, my own are at a standstill.

I write to you from Le Breton's, with a mass of uncorrected proofs before me, and the printers crying out for them.
Still Grimm must be right, when he says that time is not a thing of which we are free to dispose at our own fancy; that we owe it first and foremost to our friends, our relations, our daily duties; and that in the lavish profusion of our time on people who are indifferent, there is nothing less than vice."[229] Yet in spite of Grimm's most just remonstrance, the lavish profusion always went on as before.
There was one man, and only one man, for whose perverse and intractable spirit Diderot's most friendly patience, helpfulness, and devotion, were no match.

I have already, in dealing with Rousseau,[230] said as much of the quarrel which he picked with Diderot as the matter requires, and it would be superfluous to go over the ground again from another side.

Whether we listen to Rousseau's story or to Diderot's story, our judgment on what happened remains unchanged.