The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie[9] wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftenest quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.  As when we speak of the common error which exists among men that the moon is the cause of everything, we never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says that when we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there should exist a common error, etc.; which is the thought above.

19

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

20

Order.—­Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into four rather than into six?  Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in one?  Why into Abstine et sustine[10] rather than into “Follow Nature,"[11] or, “Conduct your private affairs without injustice,” as Plato,[12] or anything else?  But there, you will say, everything is contained in one word.  Yes, but it is useless without explanation, and when we come to explain it, as soon as we unfold this maxim which contains all the rest, they emerge in that first confusion which you desired to avoid.  So, when they are all included in one, they are hidden and useless, as in a chest, and never appear save in their natural confusion.  Nature has established them all without including one in the other.

21

Nature has made all her truths independent of one another.  Our art makes one dependent on the other.  But this is not natural.  Each keeps its own place.

22

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new.  When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.

I had as soon it said that I used words employed before.  And in the same way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different discourse, no more do the same words in their different arrangement form different thoughts!

23

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

24

Language.—­We should not turn the mind from one thing to another, except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and the time suitable, and not otherwise.  For he that relaxes out of season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season makes us languid, since we turn quite away.  So much does our perverse lust like to do the contrary of what those wish to obtain from us without giving us pleasure, the coin for which we will do whatever is wanted.

25

Eloquence.—­It requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.

26

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.