Quotes from book
Essays

Michel De Montaigne

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne are contained in three books and 107 chapters of varying length. They were originally written in Middle French and were originally published in the Kingdom of France. Montaigne's stated design in writing, publishing and revising the Essays over the period from approximately 1570 to 1592 was to record "some traits of my character and of my humours." The Essays were first published in 1580 and cover a wide range of topics.

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“How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III

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“I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

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“Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

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“As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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.

Michel De Montaigne photo

“A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

L'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soi-même.
Book I, Ch. 39
Essais (1595), Book I

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“A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the dominion of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 56. Of Prayers
Essais (1595), Book I

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“A man may be humble through vainglory.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 17
Essais (1595), Book II

Michel De Montaigne photo

“T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

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“He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Quelle vérité que ces montagnes bornent, qui est mensonge qui se tient au delà?
Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

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“There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 16
Essais (1595), Book II

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“The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“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)