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.
“Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.”
Of Repentance, Book III, Ch. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=jm8-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Malice+sucks+up+the+greatest+part+of+its+own+venom+and+poisons+itself%22&pg=PA246#v=onepage
Essais (1595), Book III
Book I, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book I
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.
Book I, Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book I
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“And not to serve for a table-talk.”
Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
Book II, Ch. 11. Of Cruelty
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
C'est une épineuse entreprise, et plus qu'il ne semble, de suivre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nôtre esprit; de pénétrer les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrêter tant de menus de ses agitations.
Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II
“All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.”
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
“One may be humble out of pride.”
Book II, Ch. 17. Of Presumption
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book II, Ch. 2. Of Drunkenness
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.”
Book I, Ch. 25
Attributed
“My appetite comes to me while eating.”
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book II, Ch. 10. Of Books
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?”
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.”
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
Book I, Ch. 14
Essais (1595), Book I
“And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.”
Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”
Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book I, Ch. 14
Attributed
Variant: Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III
“The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.”
Book II, Ch. 20
Attributed
Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.”
Book II, Ch. 37
Essais (1595), Book II
“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
Variant: He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.
“A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.”
L'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soi-même.
Book I, Ch. 39
Essais (1595), Book I
Book I, Ch. 56. Of Prayers
Essais (1595), Book I
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.”
Book I, Ch. 14
Essais (1595), Book I
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
“He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.”
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Quelle vérité que ces montagnes bornent, qui est mensonge qui se tient au delà?
Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II
Book II, Ch. 16
Essais (1595), Book II
“The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life.”
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
“All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.”
Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
