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
Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?
May God defend me from myself.
A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!
Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.
It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.
The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.
If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?
Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.
We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed.
He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.
I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.