MONTAIGNE

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

All the fame I look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

I have never studied so as to write a book, but I have done some study because I have written one.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

I quote others only in order the better express myself.

It is an absolute perfection... to know how... to get the very most out of one's own individuality.

Let us permit nature to have her way; she understands her business better than we do.

My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are.

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

No man profiteth but by the loss of others.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.

Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what is to believe.