Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
Michel de MontaigneNo wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.
Michel de MontaigneHuman wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de MontaigneFortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
Michel de MontaigneSince we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
Michel de MontaigneMemory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.
Michel de Montaigne