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 curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.
Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
Whatever are the benefits of fortune, they yet require a palate fit to relish and taste them.
We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.
Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.
Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.
In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!
Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.