Orts #880
Consider that even in actions which are vain and frivolous, in chess, tennis, and the like, this fierce and ardent involvement of an impetuous desire instantly casts the mind and limbs into thoughtlessness and disorder: we daze and hamper ourselves. He who bears himself more moderately toward winning and losing is always self-possessed. The less he becomes excited and impassioned about the game, the more advantageously and surely he plays it.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Of husbanding your will
In all things men cast themselves on the resources of others to spare their own, which alone are sure and alone powerful, if we know how to arm ourselves with them. Every man rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no man has arrived at himself.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Of physiognomy
I, who operate only close to the ground, hate that inhuman wisdom that would make us
disdainful enemies of the cultivation of the body. I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. . . . I, who boast of embracing the pleasures of life so assiduously and so particularly, find in them, when I look at them thus minutely, virtually nothing but wind. But what of it? We are all wind. And even the wind, more wisely than we, loves to make a noise and move about, and is content with its own functions, without wishing for stability and solidity, qualities that do not belong to it.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Of experience
It is chance that attaches glory to us according to its caprice. I have very often seen it go ahead of merit, and often surpass merit by a long distance. He who first thought of the resemblance between a shadow and glory did better than he intended. They are always pre-eminently empty things. The shadow also sometimes goes ahead of its body, and sometimes much exceeds it in length.
-- Montaigne, in an essay, Of glory
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and, just for fun:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1bf5pa
Bill Plympton, How To Kiss, 1988