Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
Michel de MontaigneAnd as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.
Michel de MontaigneAmongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
Michel de MontaigneI do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
Michel de Montaigne