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
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.
Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.
The thing I fear most is fear.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!