Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

The Life of himself which Cellini wrote was due to other motives than those which produced its chief competitors for first place in its class. St. Augustines aim was religious and didactic, Pepys noted down in his diary the daily events of his life for his sole satisfaction and with no intention that any one should read the cipher in which they were recorded. But Cellini wrote that the world might know, after he was dead, what a fellow he had been; what great things he had attempted, and against what odds he had carried them through.