And this is what our life consists of -- a procession of episodes and experiences which seem large when they happen, but which diminish to trivialities as soon as we get a perspective upon them. Upon these terms a diary ought to be a curious record, for in it all the events ought to be large, and all of the same size -- with the result that by and by the recorded events should still be nearly all of one size, and that size lamentably shrunken in bulk.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (University of California Press, 2015)