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 only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.
There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.
Fear sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground, and fetters them from moving.
A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.
As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.
It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.
Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.