Michel de Montaigne

“ God, being pleased to show
us, that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked
something else to fear, than the fortunes or misfortunes of this world,
manages and applies these according to His own occult will and pleasure,
and deprives us of the means foolishly to make thereof our own profit.
And those people abuse themselves who will pretend to dive into these
mysteries by the strength of human reason. They never give one hit that
they do not receive two for it ”

“ For which reason, says Plato,
— [In Critias.] —it is much more easy to satisfy the hearers, when
speaking of the nature of the gods than of the nature of men, because the
ignorance of the auditory affords a fair and large career and all manner
of liberty in the handling of abstruse things. Thence it comes to pass,
that nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any people
so confident, as those who entertain us with fables, such as your
alchemists, judicial astrologers, fortune-tellers, and physicians,
"Id genus omne." ”

“ Augustine makes out a great
proof upon his adversaries. 'Tis a conflict that is more decided by
strength of memory than by the force of reason. We are to content
ourselves with the light it pleases the sun to communicate to us, by
virtue of his rays ”