Michel De Montaigne: Doing

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”

“I 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.”

“Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)”

“No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”

“If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.”

“Saying is one thing and doing is another.”

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”

“I want us to be doing things, prolonging life's duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”

“Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”

“So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.”

“I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.”

“Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest.”

“God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand”

“It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.”

“I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.”

“[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.”

“There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?”