Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

Do little things as if they were great, because of the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ who dwells in thee.

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.