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I Was Not Long Since In A Company Where I Was Not Who Of My Fraternity Brought News Of A Kind Of Pills, By True Account, Composed Of A Hundred And Odd Several Ingredients; Whereat We Laughed Very Heartily, And Made Ourselves Good Sport; For What Rock So Hard Were Able To Resist The Shock Or Withstand The Force Of So Thick And Numerous A Battery?

-Michel De Montaigne

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I Was Not Long

Michel De Montaigne

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I Was Not Long Since In A Company Where I Was Not Who Of My Fraternity Brought News Of A Kind Of Pills, By True Account, Composed Of A Hundred And Odd Several Ingredients; Whereat We Laughed Very Heartily, And Made Ourselves Good Sport; For What Rock So Hard Were Able To Resist The Shock Or Withstand The Force Of So Thick And Numerous A Battery?

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The Laws Of Conscience, Though We Ascribe Them To Nature, Actually Come From Custom.

A Volunteer, You Assign Yourself Specific Roles And Risks According To Your Judgement Of Their Brilliance And Importance, And You See When Life Itself May Be Justifiably Devoted To Them.

I Cruelly Hate Cruelty, Both By Nature And Reason, As The Worst Of All The Vices. But Then I Am So Soft In This That I Cannot Seea Chicken's Neck Wrung Without Distress, And Cannot Bear To Hear The Squealing Of A Hare Between The Teeth Of My Hounds.

Men Of Simple Understanding, Little Inquisitive And Little Instructed, Make Good Christians.

It Is A Disaster That Wisdom Forbids You To Be Satisfied With Yourself And Always Sends You Away Dissatisfied And Fearful, Whereas Stubbornness And Foolhardiness Fill Their Hosts With Joy And Assurance.

What Of A Truth That Is Bounded By These Mountains And Is Falsehood To The World That Lives Beyond?

A Man Should Keep For Himself A Little Back Shop, All His Own, Quite Unadulterated, In Which He Establishes His True Freedom And Chief Place Of Seclusion And Solitude.

Make Your Educational Laws Strict And Your Criminal Ones Can Be Gentle; But If You Leave Youth Its Liberty You Will Have To Dig Dungeons For Ages.

When I Was Young, Beautiful Ancient Statues Were Castrated, So That The Eye Might Not Be Corrupted.... Nothing Was Gained, Unless Horses And Asses Had Also Been Castrated.

When Socrates, After Being Relieved Of His Irons, Felt The Relish Of The Itching That Their Weight Had Caused In His Legs, He Rejoiced To Consider The Close Alliance Between Pain And Pleasure.

Certainly, If He Still Has Himself, A Man Of Understanding Has Lost Nothing.

It Is Equally Pointless To Weep Because We Won't Be Alive A Hundred Years From Now As That We Were Not Here A Hundred Years Ago.

Socrates And Then Archesilaus Used To Make Their Pupils Speak First; They Spoke Afterwards. 'obest Plerumque Iss Discere Volunt Authoritas Eorum Qui Docent.' [for Those Who Want To Learn, The Obstacle Can Often Be The Authority Of Those Who Teach]

Princes Give Mee Sufficiently, If They Take Nothing From Me, And Doe Me Much Good, If They Doe Me No Hurt: It Is All I Require Of Them.

Tis The Taste Of Effeminacy That Disrelishes Ordinary And Accustomed Things.

Lucius Arruntius Killed Himself, He Said, To Escape Both The Future And The Past.

Men ... Are Not Agreed About Any One Thing, Not Even That Heaven Is Over Our Heads.

I Write To Keep From Going Mad From The Contradictions I Find Among Mankind - And To Work Some Of Those Contradictions Out For Myself.

The World Is But A Perennial Movement. All Things In It Are In Constant Motion-the Earth, The Rocks Of The Caucasus, The Pyramids Of Egypt-both With The Common Motion And With Their Own.

If Health And A Fair Day Smile Upon Me, I Am A Very Good Fellow; If A Corn Trouble My Toe, I Am Sullen, Out Of Humor, And Inaccessible.

I Do Not Portray The Thing In Itself. I Portray The Passage; Not A Passing From One Age To Another, Or, As The People Put It, From Seven Years To Seven Years, But From Day To Day, From Minute To Minute.

Have You Known How To Take Rest? You Have Done More Than He Who Hath Taken Empires And Cities.

The Dispersing And Scattering Our Names Into Many Mouths, We Call Making Them More Great.

... Whoever Believes Anything Esteems That It Is A Work Of Charity To Persuade Another Of It.

We Do Not Correct The Man We Hang; We Correct Others By Him.

There Is Nothing Of Evil In Life For Him Who Rightly Comprehends That Death Is No Evil; To Know How To Die Delivers Us From All Subjection And Constraint.

I Must Use These Great Men's Virtues As A Cloak For My Weakness.

If You Press Me To Say Why I Loved Him, I Can Say No More Than It Was Because He Was He, And I Was I.

No Man Profiteth But By The Loss Of Others.

To Say Less Of Yourself Than Is True Is Stupidity, Not Modesty. To Pay Yourself Less Than You Are Worth Is Cowardice And Pusillanimity.

A Woman Is No Sooner Ours Than We Are No Longer Hers.

Is There A Polity Better Ordered, The Offices Better Distributed, And More Inviolably Observed And Maintained, Than That Of Bees?

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.

I Would Like To Suggest That Our Minds Are Swamped By Too Much Study And By Too Much Matter Just As Plants Are Swamped By Too Much Water Or Lamps By Too Much Oil; That Our Minds, Held Fast And Encumbered By So Many Diverse Preoccupations, May Well Lose The Means Of Struggling Free, Remaining Bowed And Bent Under The Load; Except That It Is Quite Otherwise: The More Our Souls Are Filled, The More They Expand; Examples Drawn From Far-off Times Show, On The Contrary, That Great Soldiers Ad Statesmen Were Also Great Scholars.

This Very Rome That We Behold Deserves Our Love ...: The Only Common And Universal City.

One Man May Have Some Special Knowledge At First-hand About The Character Of A River Or A Spring, Who Otherwise Knows Only What Everyone Else Knows. Yet To Give Currency To This Shred Of Information, He Will Undertake To Write On The Whole Science Of Physics. From This Fault Many Great Troubles Spring.

We Are Neither Obstinately Nor Wilfully To Oppose Evils, Nor Truckle Under Them For Want Of Courage, But That We Are Naturally To Give Way To Them, According To Their Condition And Our Own, We Ought To Grant Free Passage To Diseases; And I Find They Stay Less With Me Who Let Them Alone. And I Have Lost Those Which Are Reputed The Most Tenacious And Obstinate Of Their Own Defervescence, Without Any Help Or Art, And Contrary To Their Rules. Let Us A Little Permit Nature To Take Her Own Way; She Better Understands Her Own Affairs Than We.

The Worst Condition Of Humans Is When They Lose Knowledge And Control Of Themselves.

Things Seem Greater By Imagination Than They Are In Effect.

Wonder Is The Foundation Of All Philosophy; Research, The Progress; Ignorance, The End. There Is, By Heavens, A Strong And Generous Kind Of Ignorance That Yields Nothing, For Honour And Courage, To Knowledge: An Ignorance To Conceive Which Needs No Less Knowledge Than To Conceive Knowledge.

Why Do People Respect The Package Rather Than The Man?

It Is Putting A Very High Price On One's Conjectures To Have Someone Roasted Alive On Their Account.

It Needs Good Management To Enjoy Life. I Enjoy It Twice As Much As Others, For The Measure Of Enjoyment Depends On The Greater Or Less Attention That We Give To It...the Shorter My Possession Of Life The Deeper And Fuller I Must Make It.

The Plague Of Man Is The Opinion Of Knowledge. That Is Why Ignorance Is So Recommended By Our Religion As A Quality Suitable To Belief And Obedience.

Everyone Calls Barbarity What He Is Not Accustomed To.

I Love Those Historians That Are Either Very Simple Or Most Excellent. Such As Are Between Both (which Is The Most Common Fashion), It Is They That Spoil All; They Will Needs Chew Our Meat For Us And Take Upon Them A Law To Judge, And By Consequence To Square And Incline The Story According To Their Fantasy.

Necessity Reconciles And Brings Men Together; And This Accidental Connection Afterward Forms Itself Into Laws.

As Soon As Women Become Ours We Are No Longer Theirs.

What Kind Of Truth Is It Which Has These Mountains As Its Boundary And Is A Lie Beyond Them?

Intelligence Is Required To Be Able To Know That A Man Knows Not.

Not Being Able To Govern Events, I Govern Myself, And Apply Myself To Them If They Will Not Apply Themselves To Me.

I Enjoy Books As Misers Enjoy Treasures, Because I Know I Can Enjoy Them Whenever I Please.

It Is A Stupid Presumption To Go About Despising And Condemning As False Anything That Seems To Us Improbable; This Is A Common Fault In Those Who Think They Have More Intelligence Than The Crowd.

There Is A Plague On Man, The Opinion That He Knows Something.

Any Time And Any Place Can Be Used To Study: His Room, A Garden, Is Table, His Bed; When Alone Or In Company; Morning And Evening. His Chief Study Will Be Philosophy, That Former Of Good Judgement And Character Who Is Privileged To Be Concerned With Everything.

Silence And Modesty Are Very Valuable Qualities In Conversation.

Might I Have Had My Own Will, I Would Not Have Married Wisdom Herself, If She Would Have Had Me.

The Only Good Histories Are Those Written By Those Who Had Command In The Events They Describe.

We Find Ourselves More Taken With The Running Up And Down, The Games, And Puerile Simplicities Of Our Children, Than We Do, Afterward, With Their Most Complete Actions; As If We Had Loved Them For Our Sport, Like Monkeys, And Not As Men.

Speech Belongs Half To The Speaker, Half To The Listener. The Latter Must Prepare To Receive It According To The Motion It Takes.

I Give My Opinion Not As Being Good, But As Being My Own.

I Love A Gay And Sociable Wisdom, And Shun Harshness And Austerity In Behaviour, Holding Every Surly Countenance Suspect.

Wine Is The Benevolent God, Who Gives Back Gaiety To Men And Restores Youth To The Old.

The Great And Glorious Masterpiece Of Humanity Is To Know How To Live With A Purpose.

Whenever A New Finding Is Reported To The World People Say - It Is Probably Not True. Later On, When The Reliability Of A New Finding Has Been Fully Confirmed, People Say - Ok, It May Be True But It Has No Real Significance. At Last, When Even The Significance Of The Finding Is Obvious To Everybody, People Say - Well, It Might Have Some Significance, But The Idea Is Not New.

There Is Nothing On Which Men Are Commonly More Intent Than On Making A Way For Their Opinions.

We Are All Of Us Richer Than We Think We Are.

How Many Things We Held Yesterday As Articles Of Faith Which Today We Tell As Fables.

All Other Knowledge Is Hurtful To Him Who Has Not Honesty And Good-nature

We Perceive No Charms That Are Not Sharpened, Puffed Out, And Inflated By Artifice. Those Which Glide Along Naturally And Simply Easily Escape A Sight So Gross As Ours.

I Consider It Equal Injustice To Set Our Heart Against Natural Pleasures And To Set Our Heart Too Much On Them. We Should Neither Pursue Them, Nor Flee Them; We Should Accept Them.

To Divert Myself From A Troublesome Fancy, It Is But To Run To My Books; They Presently Fix Me To Them, And Drive The Other Out Of My Thoughts, And Do Not Mutiny To See That I Have Only Recourse To Them For Want Of Other More, Real, Natural, And Lively Conveniences; They Always Receive Me With The Same Kindness.

We Have Power Over Nothing Except Our Will.

I Do Not Correct My First Imaginings By My Second--well, Yes, Perhaps A Word Or So, But Only To Vary, Not To Delete. I Want To Represent The Course Of My Humors And I Want People To See Each Part At Its Birth.

Some Impose Upon The World That They Believe That Which They Do Not; Others, More In Number, Make Themselves Believe That They Believe, Not Being Able To Penetrate Into What It Is To Believe.

We Owe Subjection And Obedience To All Our Kings, Whether Good Or Bad, Alike, For That Has Respect Unto Their Office; But As To Esteem And Affection, These Are Only Due To Their Virtue.

A Man Must Keep A Little Back Shop Where He Can Be Himself Without Reserve. In Solitude Alone Can He Know True Freedom.

You Have Your Face Bare; I Am All Face.

To Distract Myself From Tiresome Thoughts, I Have Only To Resort To Books; They Easily Draw My Mind To Themselves And Away From Other Things.

There Are Some Defeats More Triumphant Than Victories.

Habit Is Second Nature.

Who Feareth To Suffer Suffereth Already, Because He Feareth.

There Is Nothing Which So Poisons Princes As Flattery, Nor Anything Whereby Wicked Men More Easily Obtain Credit And Favor With Them.

I Moreover Affirm That Our Wisdom Itself, And Wisest Consultations, For The Most Part Commit Themselves To The Conduct Of Chance.

Intemperance Is The Plaque Of Sensuality, And Temperance Is Not Its Bane But Its Seasoning.

Like The Watermen Who Advance Forward While They Look Backward.

The Conduct Of Our Lives Is The True Mirror Of Our Doctrine.

Children's Games Are Hardly Games. Children Are Never More Serious Than When They Play.

I Am Afraid That Our Eyes Are Bigger Than Our Stomachs, And That We Have More Curiosity Than Understanding. We Grasp At Everything, But Catch Nothing Except Wind.

We Must Learn To Endure What We Cannot Avoid. Our Life Is Composed, Like The Harmony Of The World, Of Contrary Things, Also Of Different Tones, Sweet And Harsh, Sharp And Flat, Soft And Loud. If A Musician Liked Only One Kind, What Would He Have To Say?

And Truly Philosophy Is But Sophisticated Poetry. Whence Do Those Ancient Writers Derive All Their Authority But From The Poets?

The Advantage Of Living Is Not Measured By Length, But By Use; Some Men Have Lived Long, And Lived Little; Attend To It While You Are In It. It Lies In Your Will, Not In The Number Of Years, For You To Have Lived Enough.

Stubborn And Ardent Clinging To One's Opinion Is The Best Proof Of Stupidity.

Our Religion Is Made To Eradicate Vices, Instead It Encourages Them, Covers Them, And Nurtures Them.

Amongst All Other Vices There Is None I Hate More Than Cruelty, Both By Nature And Judgment, As The Extremest Of All Vices.

Learning Is Not To Be Tacked To The Mind, But We Must Fuse And Blend Them Together, Not Merely Giving The Mind A Slight Tincture, But A Thorough And Perfect Dye. And If We Perceive No Evident Change And Improvement, It Would Be Better To Leave It Alone; Learning Is A Dangerous Weapon, And Apt To Wound Its Master If It Be Wielded By A Feeble Hand, And By One Not Well Acquainted With Its Use.

It Is The Rule Of Rules, And The General Law Of All Laws, That Every Person Should Observe Those Of The Place Where He Is.

It Is A Human Tendency "to Measure Truth And Error By Our Capacity."

There Is A Sort Of Gratification In Doing Good Which Makes Us Rejoice In Ourselves.

A Learned Man Is Not Learned In All Things; But A Sufficient Man Is Sufficient Throughout, Even To Ignorance Itself.

No Spiritual Mind Remains Within Itself; It Is Always Aspiring And Going Beyond Its Own Strength.

If 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.

To Begin Depriving Death Of Its Greatest Advantage Over Us, Let Us Adopt A Way Clean Contrary To That Common One; Let Us Deprive Death Of Its Strangeness, Let Us Frequent It, Let Us Get Used To It; Let Us Have Nothing More Often In Mind Than Death... We Do Not Know Where Death Awaits Us: So Let Us Wait For It Everywhere." "to Practice Death Is To Practice Freedom. A Man Who Has Learned How To Die Has Unlearned How To Be A Slave.

Whom Conscience, Ne'er Asleep, Wounds With Incessant Strokes, Not Loud, But Deep.

Nature Has Made Us A Present Of A Broad Capacity For Entertaining Ourselves Apart, And Often Calls Us To Do So, To Teach Us That We Owe Ourselves In Part To Society, But In The Best Part To Ourselves.

There Are Few Things On Which We Can Pass A Sincere Judgement, Because There Are Few Things In Which We Have Not, In One Way Or Another, A Particular Interest.

Who So Hath His Mind On Taking, Hath It No More On What He Taketh.

The Clatter Of Arms Drowns Out The Voice Of Law.

Wisdom Has Its Excesses, And Has No Less Need Of Moderation Than Folly.

I Am Further Of Opinion That It Would Be Better For Us To Have [no Laws] At All Than To Have Them In So Prodigious Numbers As We Have.

Getting Married Is Very Much Like Going To A Restaurant With Friends. You Order What You Want Then When You See What The Other Person Has, You Wish You Had Ordered That.

The Desire For Riches Is More Sharpened By Their Use Than By Their Need. Pleasing All: A Mark That Can Never Be Aimed At Or Hit.

It Is In The Enjoyment And Not In Mere Possession That Makes For Happiness.

What Am I To Choose? "choose What You Please, As Long As You Choose." There You Have A Foolish Answer, Which Seems To Be The Outcome, However, Of All Dogmatism, Which Will Not Allow Us To Be Ignorant Of That Which We Are Ignorant.

Our Skin Is Provided As Adequately As Theirs With Endurance Against The Assaults Of The Weather: Witness So Many Nations Who Have Not Yet Tried The Use Of Any Clothes. Our Ancient Gauls Wore Hardly Any Clothes; Nor Do The Irish, Our Neighbors, Under So Cold A Sky.

The Continuous Work Of Our Life Is To Build Death.

Speaking Is Half His That Speaks, And Half His That Hears.

Judgement Can Do Without Knowledge: But Not Knowledge Without Judgement.

That Is Why Bias Jested With Those Who Were Going Through The Perils Of A Great Storm With Him And Calling On The Gods For Help: "shut Up," He Said, "so That They Do Not Realize That You Are Here With Me.

We Are All Of Us Richer Than We Think We Are; But We Are Taught To Borrow And To Beg, And Brought Up More To Make Use Of What Is Another's Than Of Our Own.

I Speak The Truth, Not My Fill Of It, But As Much As I Dare Speak; And I Dare To Do So A Little More As I Grow Old.

If Not For That Of Conscience, Yet At Least For Ambition's Sake, Let Us Reject Ambition, Let Us Disdain That Thirst Of Honor And Renown, So Low And Mendicant; That It Makes Us Beg It Of All Sorts Of People.

The Memory Represents To Us Not What We Choose But What It Pleases.

As Far As I Am Concerned, No Road That Would Lead Us To Health Is Either Arduous Or Expensive.

He Who Lives Not To Others, Lives Little To Himself.

The Common Notions That We Find In Credit Around Us And Infused Into Our Souls By Our Fathers' Seed, These Seem To Be The Universal And Natural Ones. Whence It Comes To Pass That What Is Off The Hinges Of Custom, People Believe To Be Off The Hinges Of Reason.

An Orator Of Past Times Declared That His Calling Was To Make Small Things Appear To Be Grand.

For Me, Who Only Desire To Become Wise, Not More Learned Or Eloquent, These Logical Or Aristotelian Dispositions Of Parts Are Of No Use.

Greatness Of Soul Consists Not So Much In Soaring High And In Pressing Forward, As In Knowing How To Adapt And Limit Oneself.

Age Imprints More Wrinkles In The Mind Than It Does On The Face.

The Most Evident Token And Apparent Sign Of True Wisdom Is A Constant And Unconstrained Rejoicing.

In Plain Truth, Lying Is An Accursed Vice. We Are Not Men, Nor Have Any Other Tie Upon Another, But By Our Word.

Laws Are Maintained In Credit, Not Because They Are Essentially Just, But Because They Are Laws. It Is The Mystical Foundation Of Their Authority; They Have None Other.

No One But Yourself Knows Whether You Are Cowardly And Cruel, Or Loyal And Devout; Others Do Not See You; They Surmise You By Uncertain Conjectures; They Perceive Not So Much Your Nature As Your Art.

I Find No Quality So Easy For A Man To Counterfeit As Devotion, Though His Life And Manner Are Not Conformable To It; The Essence Of It Is Abstruse And Occult, But The Appearances Easy And Showy.

He Who Remembers The Evils He Has Undergone, And Those That Have Threatened Him, And The Slight Causes That Have Changed Him From One State To Another, Prepares Himself In That Way For Future Changes And For Recognizing His Condition. The Life Of Caesar Has No More To Show Us Than Our Own; An Emperor's Or An Ordinary Man's, It Is Still A Life Subject To All Human Accidents.

It Is Only Certain That There Is Nothing Certain, And That Nothing Is More Miserable Or More Proud Than Man.

There Is No Greater Enemy To Those Who Would Please Than Expectation.

Of All Our Infirmities, The Most Savage Is To Despise Our Being.

Philosophical Discussions Habitually Make Men Happy And Joyful Not Frowning And Sad.

Words Of Wisdom

All Of The Days Go Toward Death And The Last One Arrives There.

Business In A Certain Sort Of Men Is A Mark Of Understanding, And They Are Honored For It. Their Souls Seek Repose In Agitation, As Children Do By Being Rocked In A Cradle. They May Pronounce Themselves As Serviceable To Their Friends As Troublesome To Themselves. No One Distributes His Money To Others, But Every One Therein Distributes His Time And His Life. There Is Nothing Of Which We Are So Prodigal As Of Those Two Things, Of Which To Be Thrifty Would Be Both Commendable And Useful.

Men Are Most Apt To Believe What They Least Understand.

Libertarian Party

An Ancient Father Says That A Dog We Know Is Better Company Than A Man Whose Language We Do Not Understand.

No Pleasure Is Fully Delightful Without Communications, And No Delight Absolute Except Imparted.

Obstinacy And Contention Are Common Qualities, Most Appearing In, And Best Becoming, A Mean And Illiterate Soul.

Can Anything Be Imagined So Ridiculous That This Miserable And Wretched Creature, Who Is Not So Much As Master Of Himself, But Subject To The Injuries Of All Things, Should Call Himself Master And Emperor Of The World, Of Which He Has Not Power To Know The Least Part, Much Less To Command The Whole?

One Open Way Of Speaking Introduces Another Open Way Of Speaking, And Draws Out Discoveries, Like Wine And Love.

To Make Judgements About Great And Lofty Things, A Soul Of The Same Stature Is Needed; Otherwise We Ascribe To Them That Vice Which Is Our Own.

There Is No Virtue Which Does Not Rejoice A Well-descended Nature; There Is A Kind Of I Know Not What Congratulation In Well-doing, That Gives Us An Inward Satisfaction, And A Certain Generous Boldness That Accompanies A Good Conscience.

Congratulations

Is It Not Better To Remain In Suspense Than To Entangle Yourself In The Many Errors That The Human Fancy Has Produced? Is It Not Better To Suspend Your Convictions Than To Get Mixed Up In These Seditious And Quarrelsome Divisions?

After A Tongue Has Once Got The Knack Of Lying, It Is Not To Be Imagined How Impossible Almost It Is To Reclaim It. Whence It Comes To Pass, That We See Some Men, Who Are Otherwise Very Honest, So Subject To This Vice.

To Philosophize Is To Doubt.

Nature Should Have Been Pleased To Have Made This Age Miserable, Without Making It Also Ridiculous.

There Is, Nevertheless, A Certain Respect And A General Duty Of Humanity That Ties Us, Not Only To Beasts That Have Life And Sense, But Even To Trees And Plants.

I Set Forth Notions That Are Human And My Own, Simply As Human Notions Considered In Themselves, Not As Determined And Decreed By Heavenly Ordinance.

If I Were Of The Trade, I Should Naturalize Art As Much As They "artialize" Nature.

We Ought To Love Temperance For Itself, And In Obedience To God Who Has Commanded It And Chastity; But What I Am Forced To By Catarrhs, Or Owe To The Stone, Is Neither Chastity Nor Temperance.

It Is An Absolute Perfection... To Get The Very Most Out Of One's Individuality.

Socrates ... Brought Human Wisdom Back Down From Heaven, Where She Was Wasting Her Time, And Restored Her To Man.... It Is Impossible To Go Back Further And Lower. He Did A Great Favor To Human Nature By Showing How Much It Can Do By Itself.

We Are Nearer Neighbours To Ourselves Than Whiteness To Snow, Or Weight To Stones.

It Is Probable That The Principal Credit Of Miracles, Visions, Enchantments, And Such Extraordinary Occurrences Comes From The Power Of Imagination, Acting Principally Upon The Minds Of The Common People, Which Are Softer.

Socrates, Who Was A Perfect Model In All Great Qualities, ... Hit On A Body And Face So Ugly And So Incongruous With The Beauty Of His Soul, He Who Was So Madly In Love With Beauty.

Now There Cannot Be First Principles For Men, Unless The Divinity Has Revealed Them; All The Rest--beginning, Middle, And End--isnothing But Dreams And Smoke.

It Would Be Better To Have No Laws At All, Than To Have Too Many.

It Takes So Much To Be A King That He Exists Only As Such. That Extraneous Glare That Surrounds Him Hides Him And Conceals Him From Us; Our Sight Breaks And Is Dissipated By It Being Filled And Arrested By This Strong Light.

It Needs Courage To Be Afraid.

Our Own Peculiar Human Condition Is That We Are As Fit To Be Laughed At As Able To Laugh.

A Hair Shirt Does Not Always Render Those Chaste Who Wear It.

We May So Seize On Virtue, That If We Embrace It With An Overgreedy And Violent Desire, It May Become Vicious.

Report Followeth Not All Goodness, Except Difficulty And Rarity Be Joined Thereto.

A Foreign War Is A Lot Milder Than A Civil War.

The Truth Of These Days Is Not That Which Really Is, But What Every Man Persuades Another Man To Believe.

The Most Ordinary Things, The Most Common And Familiar, If We Could See Them In Their True Light, Would Turn Out To Be The Grandest Miracles.

I Do Not Teach. I Relate.

Behold The Hands, How They Promise, Conjure, Appeal, Menace, Pray, Supplicate, Refuse, Beckon, Interrogate, Admire, Confess, Cringe, Instruct, Command, Mock And What Not Besides, With A Variation And Multiplication Of Variation Which Makes The Tongue Envious.

He Was Doubtless An Understanding Fellow That Said, There Was No Happy Marriage But Betwixt A Blind Wife And A Deaf Husband.

Lay A Beam Between These Two Towers Of Such Width As We Need To Walk On: There Is No Philosophical Wisdom Of Such Great Firmness That It Can Give Us Courage To Walk On It As We Should If It Were On The Ground.

Satiety Comes Of Too Frequent Repetition And He Who Will Not Give Himself Leisure To Be Thirsty Can Never Find The True Pleasure Of Drinking

I Aim Here Only At Revealing Myself, Who Will Perhaps Be Different Tomorrow, If I Learn Something New Which Changes Me.

The Public Weal Requires That Men Should Betray, And Lie, And Massacre.

Life In Itself Is Neither Good Nor Evil, It Is The Place Of Good And Evil, According To What You Make It.

Law Of Attraction

A Strong Imagination Begetteth Opportunity.

The Reverse Side Of Truth Has A Hundred Thousand Shapes And No Defined Limits.

Rejoice In The Things That Are Present; All Else Is Beyond Thee.

Live In The Moment

Past Present Future

There Is Nothing Useless In Nature; Not Even Uselessness Itself

Decency, Not To Dare To Do That In Public Which It Is Decent Enough To Do In Private.

The Only Good Histories Are Those That Have Been Written By The Persons Themselves Who Commanded In The Affairs Whereof They Write.

How Many We Know Who Have Fled The Sweetness Of A Tranquil Life In Their Homes, Among The Friends, To Seek The Horror Of Uninhabitable Deserts; Who Have Flung Themselves Into Humiliation, Degradation, And The Contempt Of The World, And Have Enjoyed These And Even Sought Them Out.

It Is Not Without Good Reason, That He Who Has Not A Good Memory Should Never Take Upon Him The Trade Of Lying.

The Greater Part Of The World's Troubles Are Due To Questions Of Grammar.

Is There Anything So Grave And Serious As An Ass?

Learning Must Not Only Lodge With Us: We Must Marry Her.

Nothing Fixes A Thing So Intensely In The Memory As The Wish To Forget It.

There Is Not One Of Us That Would Not Be Worse Than Kings, If So Continually Corrupted As They Are With A Sort Of Vermin Called Flatterers.

I Conceive That Pleasures Are To Be Avoided If Greater Pains Be The Consequence, And Pains To Be Coveted That Will Terminate In Greater Pleasures.

The Whole Idea We Have For Their Chastity Is Ridiculous. They Would Have To Become Numb And Invisible To Please Us. I Don't Know Whether The Exploits Of Alexander And Caesar Really Surpass The Resolution Of A Beautiful Young Woman, Bred Up In The Light And Commerce Of Our Society, Who Still Keeps Herself Whole. There Is No Doing So Hard As Not Doing.

The Most Universal Quality Is Diversity.

Children's Plays Are Not Sports, And Should Be Deemed As Their Most Serious Actions.

If Virtue Cannot Shine Bright, But By The Conflict Of Contrary Appetites, Shall We Then Say That She Cannot Subsist Without The Assistance Of Vice, And That It Is From Her That She Derives Her Reputation And Honor?

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