Anything we do reveals us. The same soul of Caesar’s which displayed herself in ordering and arranging the battle of Pharsalia is also displayed when arranging his idle and amorous affrays. You judge a horse not only by seeing its paces on a race-track but by seeing it walk—indeed, by seeing it in its stable.
We do not command our hair to stand on end with fear nor our flesh to quiver with desire. Our hands often go where we do not tell them; our tongues can fail, our voices congeal, when they want to.
I am not made for novels or plays. Their grand scenes, rages, passions, tragic moments, far from exciting me, strike me as cheap outbursts, rudimentary states in which all kinds of stupidity are let loose, where the human being is simplified to the point of foolishness and drowns instead of swimming in the waters of circumstance.
Montaigne quotations from The Complete Essays (Penguin, 1993); Paul Valéry quotation from Monsieur Teste (New York Review Books, 2025).