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
Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?
Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.
Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?
God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.
And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them....
I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.
Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.
Is it not a noble farce, where kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?
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.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.