Sublime

Les grands auteurs sont des êtres humains comme les autres. On peut les prendre sans crainte pour compagnons et leur causer librement, ainsi que Montaigne le faisait avec les penseurs de l’Antiquité.

(for virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together),

And you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and hypotheses that claim to teach me but that are not sure. A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in

Celui que j’avais bien prématurément considéré comme un vieil homme, avait mené sa barque avec l’élégante désinvolture qui sied aux êtres qui, s’ils ne croient en rien, n’ont, en revanche, plus grand-chose à redouter.

hoping by this mental alliance to strike a more firm and durable match.

As Montaigne put it, “I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them.”[5]