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Lean toward doubt
“And I follow Saint Augustine’s opinion, that it is better to lean toward doubt than toward assurance in things difficult to prove and dangerous to believe.” III.II “Of cripples” (p. 961)
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No End to Research
“It is only personal weakness that makes us content with what others orourselves have found out in this hunt for knowledge. An abler man will not rest content with it. There is always room for a successor, yes, and for ourselves, and a road in another direction. There is no end to our researches; our…
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Children
“Children are numbered among the things that we have no great reason to desire, especially at this time when it would be so hard to make them good.” III.9 “Of vanity” (p. 929) I wonder what Montaigne would think if he saw what it was like to raise children today, in our world.
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Capable, even in ignorance
“If a man is commonplace in conversation and rare in writing, that means that his capacity is in the place from which he borrows it, and not in himself. A learned man is not learned in all matters; but the capable man is capable in all matters, even in ignorance.” III.2 “Of repentance” (p. 741)
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Another type of good believers
“Of simple souls, less curious and less learned, are made good Christians, who, through reverence and obedience, believe simply and live under the laws. In the middle range of mental vigor and ability, error in opinion is engendered; those in this range follow the first plausible meaning, and have some claim to regard our sticking…
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Education is not regurgitation
“Let him be asked for an account not merely of the words of his lesson, but of its sense and substance, and let him judge the profit he has made by the testimony not of his memory, but of his life. Let him be made to show what he has just learned in a hundred…