Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

"[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out."

"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know."

"Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness."

"There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent."

"Why do people respect the package rather than the man?"

"I quote others only in order the better to express myself."

"We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there."

"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens."

"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I."

"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."

"Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement."

"We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there."

"I quote others only in order the better to express myself."

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

"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."