“We are great fools. ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say, and ‘I have done nothing today.’ What! have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental, but the most noble of your occupations. ‘If I had been put in charge of some great affair, I might have shown what I can do.’ Have you been able to reflect on your life and control it? Then you have performed the greatest work of all.”

—Michel de Montainge, from On Experience, 1580.