Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays

more friends to one another than either enemies or friends to their country, or than friends to ambition and innovation;

There is a certain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields they would preserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is more firm and secure than by our hedges and ditches. “Furem signata sollicitant . . . aperta effractarius praeterit.” [“Things sealed, up invite a thief: the housebreaker passes by open doors.”—Seneca, E

[“All vices are less dangerous when open to be seen, and then most pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled good nature.” —Seneca, Ep. 56]

There are some countries where ‘twas the custom for children to kill their fathers; and others, where the fathers killed their children, to avoid their being an impediment one to another in life; and naturally the expectations of the one depend upon the ruin of the other.

[“Galla, refuse me; love is glutted with joys that are not attended with trouble.”—Martial, iv. 37.]

‘Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it to concoct.

[“What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the appetite.—“Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.]

That so many garrisoned houses have been undone whereas this of mine remains, makes me apt to believe that they were only lost by being guarded; this gives an enemy both an invitation and colour of reason; all defence shows a face of war.