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
There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.
If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
Men throw themselves on foreign assistances to spare their own, which, after all, are the only certain and sufficient ones.
From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.
Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .
True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
May God defend me from myself.
We have power over nothing except our will.