Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580)

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For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

Michel de Montaigne
Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.

Michel de Montaigne
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

Michel de Montaigne
The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

Michel de Montaigne
A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

Michel de Montaigne
Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

Michel de Montaigne
Nature has made us a present of a broad capacity for entertaining ourselves apart, and often calls us to do so, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but in the best part to ourselves.

Michel de Montaigne
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

Michel de Montaigne
Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

Michel de Montaigne
Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

Michel de Montaigne
I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

Michel de Montaigne
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.

Michel de Montaigne
The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.

Michel de Montaigne
If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat of a particular dish, do not worry; I will find you another who will not agree with him.

Michel de Montaigne
Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

Michel de Montaigne
My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

Michel de Montaigne
Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?

Michel de Montaigne
If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.

Michel de Montaigne
Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

Michel de Montaigne
The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

Michel de Montaigne
He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.

Michel de Montaigne
Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.

Michel de Montaigne
The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can.

Michel de Montaigne
There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.

Michel de Montaigne
Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.

Michel de Montaigne
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.

Michel de Montaigne
Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.

Michel de Montaigne
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

Michel de Montaigne
For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

Michel de Montaigne
He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.

Michel de Montaigne