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Michel De Montaigne Quotes
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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.

Montaigne had a direct influence on Western writers, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare.

In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sçay-je?" .

Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.

✵ 28. February 1533 – 13. September 1592
Michel De Montaigne photo
Michel De Montaigne: 264   quotes 14   likes

Michel De Montaigne Quotes

“Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 8
This quote is a paraphrase of a lengthier statement, as follows: We ordinarily see, in the actions of the world, that Fortune, to shew us her power in all things, and who takes a pride in abating our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate in emulation of virtue; and most favours those operations the web of which is most purely her own; whence it is that the simplest amongst us bring to pass great business, both public and private; and, as Seiramnes, the Persian, answered those who wondered that his affairs succeeded so ill, considering that his deliberations were so wise, ‘that he was sole master of his designs, but success was wholly in the power of fortune’; these may answer the same, but with a contrary turn.
From Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton (1877), Book the Third, Chapter VIII — Of The Art Of Conference. Note : this is the version found at Project Gutenberg.
Attributed

Fools

“Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

God

“How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

Men

“To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who confers a benefit on any one loves him better than he is beloved by him again.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 8. Of the Affections of Fathers
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love

“Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet— the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Nature

“For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

Truth , Way , Time

“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Pleasure , Communication

“The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play
And in one word, just nothing.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

World

“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 30. Of Cannibals
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Victory

“Few men have been admired by their own domestics.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Few men have been admired by their own households.

Men

“Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Variant: Of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our being. (Charles Cotton translation)

“The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

“I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Lying

“When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Cats

“He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 42
Essais (1595), Book I

Pleasure , Drink

“Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 7
Attributed

Death

“Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 37. Of the Resemblance of Children to their Brothers
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 39
Attributed

“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Disease

“Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 14
Attributed

Pain , Pleasure

“I, who have so much and so universally adored this [greek], "excellent mediocrity," 32 of ancient times, and who have concluded the most moderate measure the most perfect, shall I pretend to an unreasonable and prodigious old age?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Age , Universe , Time , Perfection

“I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I

Death

“I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 37
Essais (1595), Book II

Failure , Light , Success , Sun

“Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Love , Life , World , Dreams

“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men

“I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire.
Book I, Ch. 26
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

“There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 37
Essais (1595), Book II
Variant: There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

World , Universe

“A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 38. Of Solitude
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Peaceful

“Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire: "Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 4. http://books.google.com/books?id=pXItAAAAMAAJ&q="Non+pudeat+dicere+quod+non+pudet+scntire+Let+no+man+be+ashamed+to+speak+what+he+is+not+ashamed+to+think"&pg=PA57#v=onepage
Essais (1595), Book III

Thinking

“It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 26
Attributed

“What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Stupidity

“For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 11
Essais (1595), Book II

Parting

“We were halves throughout, and to that degree that methinks by outliving him I defraud him of his part.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 27. Of Friendship
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Parting

“In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.”

Michel De Montaigne

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Attributed

Books , Education , Boy , Parting

“The world is but a perpetual see-saw.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

World

“The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Love , Behavior , Sport , Learning

“I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

J'ai seulement fait ici un amas de fleurs étrangères, n'y ayant fourni du mien que le filet à les lier.
Book III, Ch. 12 : Of Physiognomy
Essais (1595), Book III

Men , Flowers

“Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Chance

“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Learning

“Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 14
Essais (1595), Book I

“He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

Life , Way , Evil , Change

“There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed