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
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.