-“I only spent and hour on it”; “I have not seen it since”. –“All right,” I say: “let us leave those examples. Show me something which does represent you entirely, something by which you are happy to be measured.” And then I say, “What do you consider the most beautiful aspect of your work? Is it this quality or that quality? Is it its gracious style, its subject-matter, your discovery of the material, you judgment, you erudition?” For I normally find that men are as wrong in judging their own work as other people’s, not simply because their emotions are involved but because they lack the ability to understand it and analyze it. The work itself, by its own momentum and fortune, can favor the author beyond his own understanding and research; it can run ahead of him.

Michel De Montaigne