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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

“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 26
Attributed
Variant: The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Wisdom

“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

Michel De Montaigne

As quoted in The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne (1877) edited by William Carew Hazlitt, p. 289

“Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Soul , Sense

“The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Support , Evil

“At the very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down, whilst still entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile myself to Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by so doing less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much the better of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or counsellor than of a physician.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III

God , Health , Disease

“There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 39
Attributed
Variant: There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

Family

“I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Flowers

“Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 36. Of the most Excellent Men
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Age , Universe , Parting

“Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

Life , Thinking , Heart

“In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

God

“Observe, observe perpetually.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

“A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

“It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 3. A Usage of the Island of Cea http://books.google.com/books?id=eQt-AAAAIAAJ&q="It+is+the+part+of+cowardice+not+of+courage+to+go+and+crouch+in+a+hole+under+a+massive+tomb+to+avoid+the+blows+of+fortune"
Essais (1595), Book II

Courage , Parting

“It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude…. The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

God , Truth

“It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book II, Ch. 13
Attributed

Death

“It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.”

Michel De Montaigne

Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Book I, Ch. 23
Attributed

Children , Game

“All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 2. Of Sorrow
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Suffering , Passion

“Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book II, Ch. 12
Attributed

Forgetting

“Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Art , Science , Perfection

“Whatever can be done another day can be done today.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I

“T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 7. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light

“There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Nature

“We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Women , God , Knowledge , Time

“In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 9
Attributed

Men , Truth , Lying

“The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

God , Law , Soul

“As far as fidelity is concerned, there is no animal in the world as treacherous as man.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

World , Animals

“For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Truth , Time

“Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life

“We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Truth , Knowledge

“The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Knowledge

“Accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, 5 but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 15. Of the Education of Children
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Amongst so many borrowed things, I am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men , Lie

“Ambition is not a vice of little people.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 10
Attributed

People

“Habit is a second nature.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Nature

“God never sends evils”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

God , Evil

“My craft and my skill is living.”

Michel De Montaigne

“What know I?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

or What do I know?
Que sais-je?
The notion of skepticism is most clearly understood by asking this question.
Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

“My trade and my art is living.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Mon métier et mon art, c'est vivre.
Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II

Art

“Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Chaque homme porte la forme, entière de l'humaîne condition.
Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III

“No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book II, Ch. 1
Attributed

“It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Despair , Bird

“It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Lying , Memory

“It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5
Essais (1595), Book III

Marriage , Bird , Despair