Michel de Montaigne

What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under thesame roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

We undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits their sickness and their health.

I quote others in order to better express my own self.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

A man must live in the world and make the best of it such as it is.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

Oh what a valiant faculty is hope.

There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgement as doth anger.

Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.