The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.
Michel de MontaigneOnce conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Michel de MontaigneIt makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.
Michel de MontaigneI look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.
Michel de Montaigne