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 ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
The thing I fear most is fear.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)
Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.