Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them. - Michel de Montaigne

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.

Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls.

The danger was not that I would do wrong, but that I would do nothing