I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older. - Michel de Montaigne

‘Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.