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
To understand via the heart is not to understand.
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.
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.
There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.
God sends the cold according to the coat.
The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.
God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.
The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.
I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.
Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.
We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.