Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaignewas one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essaiscontains some of the most influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers all over the world, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche,...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 February 1533
CountryFrance
If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.
The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.
No man profiteth but by the loss of others.
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.
O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.
Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality
A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.
I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.
Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.
Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.
The soul that has no established aim loses itself
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.