Michel de Montaigne

“ O pitiful coward, thou
faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me
yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;
see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur
them up"; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some
fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. ”

“ But 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can
be overcome by the strength of wine?
"Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae."
To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The
most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to
keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness.
There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one
minute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether
according to her natural condition she ever can be ”

“ The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and
support, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being
as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The
natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that
concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes
a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of
human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep ”

“ And if we cannot please ourselves but it
must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's
conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult
preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be
despised. ”

“ Chapter II. Of drunkenness.
The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as
they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but
although they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices ”

“ I mean when nothing should jostle and
discompose her, which a thousand accidents may do. 'Tis to much purpose
that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy,
when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined
that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men
have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight
wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise
as he will, after all he is but a man ”

“ The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their
greatest heroes of tears:
"Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas."
["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet."
—Aeneid, vi. i.]
'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for
totally to suppress them is not in him to do. ”

“ Nevertheless, these
restrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that
men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and
magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or
the consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be
employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the
night on which a man intends to get children.
'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely
hastened his end by drinking pure wine. ”