Our qualities have no title but in comparison
     Preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties
     Proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world
     Satisfied and pleased with and in themselves
     Settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have
     Some wives covetous indeed, but very few that are good managers
     That looks a nice well-made shoe to you
     There can be no pleasure to me without communication
     Think myself no longer worth my own care
     Tis for youth to subject itself to common opinions
     Tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good
     Titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter
     Travel with not only a necessary, but a handsome equipage
     Turn up my eyes to heaven to return thanks, than to crave
     Weigh, as wise:  men should, the burden of obligation
     What sort of wine he liked the best:  “That of another,”
     What step ends the near and what step begins the remote
     When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself
     Wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the impetus of friendship
     World where loyalty of one’s own children is unknown
     Wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others
     You have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.

X. Of Managing the Will. 
XI.  Of Cripples. 
XII.  Of Physiognomy.

CHAPTER X

OF MANAGING THE WILL

Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to say better, possess me:  for ’tis but reason they should concern a man, provided they do not possess him.  I am very solicitous, both by study and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and am very much moved with very few things.  I have a clear sight enough, but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent.  I am very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I so much value, ’tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.  A man ought to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and