Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a conservative and earnest Catholic but, as a result of his anti-dogmatic cast of mind, he is considered the father, alongside his contemporary and intimate friend Étienne de La Boétie, of the "anti-conformist" tradition in French literature.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then 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 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 sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
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 nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
“The greatest and glorious masterpiece of a man is how to live with a purpose.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”
Michel de Montaigne
“If anyone gets intoxicated with his knowledge when he looks beneath him, let him turn his eyes upward toward past ages, and he will lower his horns, finding there so many thousands of minds that trample him underfoot. If he gets into some flattering presumption about his valor, let him remember the lives of the two Scipios, so many armies, so many nations, all of whom leave him so far behind them. No particular quality will make a man proud who balances it against the many weaknesses and imperfections that are also in him, and, in the end, against the nullity of man’s estate.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears.I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.Thus Diogenes, who pottered about by himself, rolling his tub and turning up his nose at the great Alexander, considering us as flies or bags of wind, was really a sharper and more stinging judge, to my taste, than Timon, who was surnamed the hater of men. For what we hate we take seriously. Timon wished us ill, passionately desired our ruin, shunned association with us as dangerous, as with wicked men depraved by nature. Diogenes esteemed us so little that contact with us could neither disturb him nor affect him, and avoided our company, not through fear of association with us, but through disdain of it; he considered us incapable of doing either good or evil....Our own peculiar condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.”
Michel de Montaigne
“There is indeed a certain sense of gratification when we do a good deed that gives us inward satisfaction, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience…These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail. “On Repentance”
Michel de Montaigne
“I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.”
Michel de Montaigne
“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”
Michel de Montaigne
“We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.”
Michel de Montaigne
“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”
Michel de Montaigne
“Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
Michel de Montaigne
“a good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”
Michel de Montaigne
“This, reader, is an honest book...I want to appear in my simple, natural and everyday dress, without strain or artifice; for it is myself that I portray”
Michel de Montaigne
“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.”
Michel de Montaigne
“It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
Michel de Montaigne
“My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.”
Michel de Montaigne
“I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Every movement reveals us.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”
Michel de Montaigne
“Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Let every foot have its own shoe.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”
Michel de Montaigne
“No wind favors he who has no destined port.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Le monde n’est qu’une balançoire perpétuelle. Toutes choses y balancent sans cesse.”
Michel de Montaigne
“In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.”
Michel de Montaigne
“There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”
Michel de Montaigne
“There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.”
Michel de Montaigne