Michel Montaigne

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.

Few men have been admired by their own households.

A noble farce, wherein kinds, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

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.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.