It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.
Michel de MontaigneWe are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?
Michel de MontaigneIf my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
Michel de MontaigneThe shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de MontaigneThe receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all; to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.
Michel de Montaigne