"Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
locum non debeat se sapiens committere."

["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]

Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are
the same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are
not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and
offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as
a thing conformable to our being.

I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have
come to, had they lived their full age. 'Tis but finding the end of the
clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater
distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is
betwixt this and the greatest. Now the first that are imbued with this
beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the
oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and
so caulk up that place with some false piece;

[Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should
read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all
philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable."
--Melanges Historiques, xvii. 694, ed. of Lefevre.]

besides that: