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
The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
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?
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark.
The most certain sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness; her state is like the things above the moon, always clear and serene.
The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.
He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.
Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
A person is bound to lose when he talks about himself; if he belittles himself, he is believed; if he praises himself, he isn't believed.