The most mistrustful of our kings made himself secure mainly by voluntarily surrendering his life and entrusting his liberty to the hands of his foes, showing complete trust in them so that they might learn trust from him… It is an excellent way to win the heart and mind of another man to go and trust him, putting yourself in his power – provided it be done freely, quite unconstrained by necessity, and on condition that the trust we bring is clear and pure, and that at least our brow is not weighed down by hesitations.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

A man had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as there are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who hazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship; for ’tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for our own good. I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are more than his good ones: Plato requires three things in him who will examine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, boldness.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

I am not so much worried about how I am in the minds of other men as how I am to myself. I want to be enriched by me not by borrowings from others. Those outside us only see events and external appearances… They do not see my mind: they only see the looks on my face.

That is why all those judgements which are based on external appearances are unbelievably unreliable and dubious, and why there is no more reliable witness than each man is to himself.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

The realisation that I have been becoming a less confident person, in some aspects, is not entirely new. It is more evidently felt when I am engaging people, or set myself on some new task – assignments that may not be altogether alien to my experience. It is an unpleasant realisation, made worse knowing that the process can be accumulative and detrimental.

This is not an inferiority complex (neither is it, as this denial may suggest, on the other extreme: narcissism)… this is merely self-awareness.

The lack of confidence, I deduce, stems from not only the lack of independence in thought and action (or rather, the over-reliance on dependence and family), but also the feeling of a lack of control or direction over my life, instead being controlled by forces around me.

I had previously [private post] acknowledged – although not necessary accepted – that my drive to accomplish and achieve has been greatly diminished following a change in philosophy concerning the pursuit of contentment, but I had, in all honesty, not anticipated how this might then affect self-esteem. It is not that I am incapable of controlling how I respond to them – of course, we always have a choice – but the existence of these circumstances does propel me towards certain decisions, to continually make conscious decisions to go against what I would otherwise decide had these forces been absent. It is not healthy, but these forces do exist, and the values that admonish me to submit to them supersede all else.

Frequent commerce with the world can be an astonishing source of light for a man’s judgement. We are all cramped and confined inside ourselves: we can see no further than the end of our noses. When they asked Socrates where he came from he did not say ‘From Athens’, but ‘From the world’. He, whose thoughts were fuller and wider, embraced the universal world as his City, scattered his acquaintances, his fellowship and his affections throughout the whole human race, not as we do who only look at what lies right in front of us.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness. No powerful mind stops within itself: it is always stretching out and exceeding its capacities. It makes sorties which go beyond what it can achieve: it is only half-alive if it is not advancing, pressing forward, getting driven into a corner and coming to blows; its inquiries are shapeless and without limits; its nourishment consists in amazement, the hunt and uncertainty.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

I embark upon discussion and argument with great ease and liberty. Since opinions do not find me in a ready soil to thrust and spread their roots into, no premise shocks me, no belief turns me, no matter how opposite to my own they may be. There is no idea so frivolous or odd which does not appear to me to be fittingly produced by the mind of man.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

I fear that I will personally lose by the change. My mind does not always move straight ahead but backwards too. I distrust my present thoughts hardly less than my past ones and my second or third thoughts hardly less than my first. We are often as stupid when correcting ourselves as others… … I have long since grown old but not one inch wiser. ‘I’ now and ‘I’ then are certainly twain, but which ‘I’ was better? I know nothing about that. If we were always progressing towards improvement, to be old would be a beautiful thing.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)

We cheat ourselves of what is rightly useful to us in order to conform our appearances to the common opinion. We are not so much concerned with what the actual nature of our being is within us, as with how it is perceived by the public. Even wisdom and the good things of the mind seem fruitless to us if we enjoy them by ourselves, if they are not paraded before the approving eyes of others.

~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)