He seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.
Essays, I.XXII
Cotton’s translation as printed in the Hazlitt-edited edition digitised by Project Gutenberg (“slily” is the edition’s spelling). Note the opening “For, in truth” and the calf-and-ox anecdote that quote sites almost always drop.
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Montaigne’s Essais first appeared in 1580, and the Charles Cotton translation that supplies this exact English wording dates from 1685–86, edited by William Carew Hazlitt in 1877 — original and translation alike are long in the public domain in the United States, which is why Project Gutenberg distributes the text freely ↗. Be aware that a modern twentieth-century translation of the same sentence would carry its own translator’s copyright; the wording quoted on this page does not.
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