Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;  It thinks it discovers at a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the motion.

Montaigne

He who has neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist nor fly, what can we do with him?

Michel de Montaigne

There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.


Mark Twain, as quoted in The Consciousness Deniers, Galen Strawson (NYRB, March 13, 2018)

Some men relate what they think, as what they know.

Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle.

Samuel Johnson, on two separate occasions, to James Boswell in his The Life of Samuel Johnson