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
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.
Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.
The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.
Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.
Why do people respect the package rather than the man?
Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.
Let every foot have its own shoe.
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
Saying is one thing and doing is another
The continuous work of our life is to build death.
The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.
I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
Every movement reveals us.