"My mother had left some romances behind after her, which my father and I began to read after supper. ...In a short time I acquired, by this dangerous method, not only extreme facility in reading and understanding what I read, but a knowledge of the passions that was unique in a child of my age.  ...I conceived nothing but I felt everything...they shaped in me ...a peculiar stamp, and gave me odd and romantic notions of human life, of which experience and reflection have never been able to wholly cure me."

"The romances came to an end in the summer of 1719. ...My mother's library being exhausted, we had recourse to the share of her father's which had fallen to us.  ...the library had been collected by a minister, who was even a learned man ...and a man of taste and intellect."

"Plutarch especially became my favorite author. the pleasure I took in reading him over and over again cured me a little of my taste for romance.... [These] gave rise, formed in me the free and republican spirit, the proud and indomitable character unable to endure slavery or servitude, which has tormented me throughout my life...".

Sorrows of Young Werter (Goerthe, 1774) (this was a seminal Romantic novel by the father of German Romanticism) "The gentle and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, , which had for their object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors (the DeLaceys) and with the wants which were forever alive in my own bosom. ... I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. ... I was dependent on none and related to none.  ..." .

Plutarch's Lives (c. 46 AD) "...Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, and to admire the love and heroes of past ages.  ... I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice... I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers..." ).

Paradise Lost (Milton, 1667) "Like Adam, I was apparently united by no likend to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come frorth from the hands of God, a perfect creature;, happy and prosperous, guarded by the special care of his creator...but I was wretched and helpless, and alone.  Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me".