Étienne de La Boétie

I saw the thread of a man’s career cut when it was making wonderful progress and blossoming, and end so magnificently that his ambitious and audacious goals could not have been as remarkable as their interruption was.

Which saying of his gave perhaps matter and occasion to La Boétie to write his “Voluntary Servitude.

I have therefore thought fit to borrow one of Estienne de la Boétie, and such a one as shall honor and adorn all the rest of my work — namely, a discourse that he called Voluntary Servitude;

because it was he, because it was I.

It has ever been my belief, contrary to the opinion of many, and particularly of La Boétie, that those whom we see so subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling sickness,vi morbi saepe coactus Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,Concidit, et spumas agit;

and the greatest I ever knew, I mean for the natural parts of the soul, was Étienne de la Boétie;

The deformity, that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boétie, was of this predicament: