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.
“Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.”
“People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.”
“Bir amaca bağlanmayan ruh yolunu kaybeder. Çünkü her yerde olmak, hiçbir yerde olmamaktır.”
“Kendimizden kaçmamız, kendimizde olup biteni bilmememizdendir.”
“Kanunlar doğru oldukları için değil, kanun oldukları için yürürlükte kalırlar. Kendilerini dinletmeleri akıldışı bir güçten gelir, başka bir şeyden değil. (..) Kanunlardan daha çok, daha ağır, daha geniş haksızlıklara yol açan ne vardır?”
“İnsanın doğuşunu görmekten herkes kaçar ama ölümünü görmeye hep koşa koşa gideriz. İnsanı öldürmek için gün ışığında, geniş meydanlar ararız ama onu yaratmak için karanlık köşelere gizleniriz.”
“Biz pek şaşkın varlıklarız: Filanca hayatını işsiz güçsüz geçirdi, deriz; bugün hiçbir şey yapmadım, deriz. -Bir şey yapmadım da ne demek? Yaşadınız ya!”
“Bundan sonraki halim ancak yarım bir varlık olacak; ben artık o ben olmayacağım. Gün geçtikçe kendimden ayrılıyor, uzaklaşıyorum.”
“Faccio dire agli altri quello che non posso dire altrettanto bene, sia per insufficienza del mio linguaggio sia per insufficienza del mio sentimento.”
“There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.”
“It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.”
“All is a-swarm with commentaries; of authors there is a dearth.”
“If any one should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I feel it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was he; because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power that brought on this union.”
“The beautiful souls are they that are unniversal, open, and ready for all things.”
“Eduquer, c'est allumer un feu”
“We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.”
“We need but little learning to live happily.”
“I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other”
“Saying is one thing and doing is another”
“The continuous work of our life is to build death.”
“How many things were articles of faith to us yesterday that are fables to us today?”
“There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.”
“We are all blockheads.”
“If I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retentiveness.”
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
“Il faut se prêter à autrui et ne se donner qu'à soi-même.”
“Cada cual llama barbarie a lo que no forma parte de su costumbre.”
“Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.”
“I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more as I grow older.”
“My art and profession is to live.”
“Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.”
“It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.”
“I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.”
“Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)”
“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”