“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 1.

National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

What is Art? (1897)

trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 90
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 10.

La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir être à soi.
Book I, Ch. 39
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 76
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

Source: No Man's Mistress