Sublime

The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.

Ceci nous dévoile déjà un des principaux traits, le trait essentiel peut-être de son caractère : Érasme ne veut se lier à rien ni à personne. Il n'entend pas s'astreindre à servir fidèlement un maître, un prince, ni même Dieu ; sa nature éprouve un profond, un irrésistible besoin d'indépendance qui l'oblige à rester libre et à ne se soumettre à per

one soul in bodies twain,

Montaigne, lui, ne se raconte pas, ni ne nous encombre de ses souvenirs. Que fait-il ? Il pense, ou plutôt il s’essaie à penser, toujours au présent, même sur le passé, toujours en son nom propre, même sur la pensée des autres, d’une réflexion toujours en cours, jamais achevée, toujours provisoire, toujours en recherche, toujours recommencée, il pe

Bacon’s most important book, The Advancement of Learning, is in many ways remarkably modern. He is commonly regarded as the originator of the saying “Knowledge is power,” and though he may have had predecessors who said the same thing, he said it with new emphasis. The whole basis of his philosophy was practical: to give mankind mastery over the fo

I imagine many people could have achieved wisdom if they had not imagined they had already achieved it, if they had not dissembled about some of their own characteristics and turned a blind eye to others.

It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness

saith: