“Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."”
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.”
Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Variant: Of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our being. (Charles Cotton translation)
Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?”
Quand je me joue à ma chatte, qui sait si elle passe son temps de moi, plus que je ne fais d'elle.
Book II, Ch. 12
The 1595 edition adds: “We entertain each other with reciprocal monkey tricks. If I have my time to begin or to refuse, so has she hers.” As quoted in Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am https://books.google.it/books?id=y8Drc-QghEIC&pg=PT21, trans. David Wills, Fordham University Press, 2008.
Essais (1595), Book II
“He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.”
Book I, Ch. 42
Essais (1595), Book I
“Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.”
Book I, Ch. 7
Attributed
“Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.”
Book II, Ch. 37. Of the Resemblance of Children to their Brothers
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”
Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.”
Book I, Ch. 14
Attributed
Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”
Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
“I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.”
Book II, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book II
Variant: I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.
“Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.”
Book II, Ch. 37
Essais (1595), Book II
“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)