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
Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?
The world always looks straights ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward; as for me, I roll about in myself.
Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.
Man will rise, if God by exception lends him a hand; he will rise by abandoning and renouncing his own means, and letting himselfbe raised and uplifted by purely celestial means.
Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.
Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.
I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.
Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?
We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.
The human face is a weak guarantee; yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows; I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance.