John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Page 964
| Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne. (1533–1592) (continued) |
| 9309 |
| Few men have been admired by their own domestics. 1 |
| Book iii. Chap ii. Of Repentance. |
| 9310 |
| It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. 2 |
| Book iii. Chap. v. Upon some Verses of Virgil. |
| 9311 |
| And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one. |
| Book iii. Chap. v. Upon some Verses of Virgil. |
| 9312 |
| All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me. |
| Book iii. Chap. v. Upon some Verses of Virgil. |
| 9313 |
| ’T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light. 3 |
| Book iii. Chap. vii. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness. |
| 9314 |
| We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge. 4 |
| Book iii. Chap. viii. Of the Art of Conversation. |
| 9315 |
| I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance. 5 |
| Book iii. Chap. viii. Of the Art of Conversation. |
| 9316 |
| What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out? 6 |
| Book iii. Chap. viii. Of the Art of Conversation. |
| 9317 |
| The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried. 7 |
| Book iii. Chap. ix. Of Vanity. |
| Note 1. See Plutarch, Quotation 161. [back] |
| Note 2. See Davies, Quotation 2. [back] |
| Note 3. See Tennyson, Quotation 67. [back] |
| Note 4. Lactantius: Divin. Instit. iii. 28. [back] |
| Note 5. Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of great design as of chance.—Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld: Maxim 57. [back] |
| Note 6. See Churchill, Quotation 3. [back] |
| Note 7. Livy, xxiii. 3. [back] |