Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580)

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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader
who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.

Michel de Montaigne
Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward.

Michel de Montaigne
Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.

Michel de Montaigne
If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

Michel de Montaigne
I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.

Michel de Montaigne
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still remember that it is man that gives, and man that receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, it is a mortal hand that accepts it.

Michel de Montaigne
As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.

Michel de Montaigne
We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

Michel de Montaigne
I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

Michel de Montaigne
Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude.

Michel de Montaigne
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

Michel de Montaigne
Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

Michel de Montaigne
No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Michel de Montaigne
I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.

Michel de Montaigne
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.

Michel de Montaigne
Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

Michel de Montaigne
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.

Michel de Montaigne
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

Michel de Montaigne
Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.

Michel de Montaigne
We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

Michel de Montaigne
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.

Michel de Montaigne
The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.

Michel de Montaigne
As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

Michel de Montaigne
No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.

Michel de Montaigne
We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

Michel de Montaigne
Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

Michel de Montaigne
Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

Michel de Montaigne
We commend a horse for his strength, and sureness of foot, and not for his rich caparisons; a greyhound for his share of heels, not for his fine collar; a hawk for her wing, not for her jesses and bells. Why, in like manner, do we not value a man for what is properly his own? He has a great train, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so many thousand pounds a year, and all these are about him, but not in him.

Michel de Montaigne
If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.

Michel de Montaigne
Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.

Michel de Montaigne