I got up at five - by eight it feels to me as if I have already lived a whole day mentally, thus I have earned the right to be foolish until the evening. Paul Valéry's famous Cahiers, his notebooks of thought, were filled with notes almost daily for over half a century and were published only in 1945 after his death. They are a unique laboratory of thought for the modern individual and a prime example of life philosophy as self-therapy.