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
Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.
We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.
A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act.
A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity.
We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.