Michel De Montaigne: Man

“Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 26
Essais (1595), Book I

Learning

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

Wisdom , Learning

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 13
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays

Music , Learning , Time , Dance

“Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.”

Michel De Montaigne

L'homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines.
Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II
Source: The Complete Essays

God

“Every man has within himself the entire human condition”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III
Variant: Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

“Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”

Michel De Montaigne

“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

People

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 1
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.”

Michel De Montaigne

“A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Stupidity , Madness

“Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Star , Nature , Light , Universe

“Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
Variant: There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Life , Law , Time

“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

“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

“Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 12 : Of Physiognomy
Essais (1595), Book III

God , Faith , Hope , Suffering

“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