I have been a man and you haven't: This intelligence of ours only serves to replace those impressions which make you love and suffer by faint facsimiles which cause less grief and induce less tenderness. In the rare moments when I recapture all my affection, all my suffering, it's because my feelings have ceased to be based on these false ideas and reverted to something which is the same in you and in me. And that seems to me so superior to everything else that it's only when I've become a dog again, a poor little Zadig like you, that I begin to write and books that are written like that are the only books I like.