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
Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.
Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.
We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak.
The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.
He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees.
The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.
No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.
Like a full-fed guest, depart to rest ...
Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion.
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.
Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.
Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.