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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“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

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“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)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“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)

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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)

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“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)

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

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“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)

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

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

Michel De Montaigne photo

“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)

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“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)

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“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)

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

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

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

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“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)