Montaigne is famous for the ceiling of his library, on the beams of which are carved over fifty of his favourite Latin and Greek quotations. The inscription below is from the New Testament, the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, XII, 3.
Ne plus sapite quam oporteat, sed sapite ad sobrietatem.
Ne soyez pas plus sages qu'il ne faut. (Rom. XII, 3)
For I say...to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly...
In other words,
ReplyDeleteDon't be cleverer than you need to be. cf.Ecclesiastes VII, 16
as well as Rom XII.16 :
Be not wise in your own conceits.