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
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.
I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.
If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
We must not attach knowledge to the mind; we have to incorporate it there.
Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.
I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?
It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.
There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury...but envy can gain nothing but vexation.