Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (Charles Cotton translation)
7,241 passages indexed from Essays of Michel de Montaigne (Michel de Montaigne (Charles Cotton translation)) — Page 128 of 145
License: Public Domain
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3104
It is in the power of the jaundice, indeed, to make us turn yellow, but ‘tis not in the power of our own will. Now these effects that we discover in other animals, much greater than ours, seem to imply some more excellent faculty in them unknown to us; as ‘tis to be presumed there are several other qualities and abilities of theirs, of which no appearances have arrived at us.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3143
‘Cause Anthony is fired with Glaphire’s charms Fain would his Fulvia tempt me to her arms. If Anthony be false, what then? must I Be slave to Fulvia’s lustful tyranny? Then would a thousand wanton, waspish wives,
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2667
I constrained and racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by that means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold to me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a tyrannical manner of proceeding.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3032
“The earth did first spontaneously afford Choice fruits and wines to furnish out the board; With herbs and flow’rs unsown in verdant fields. But scarce by art so good a harvest yields; Though men and oxen mutually have strove, With all their utmost force the soil t’ improve,”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4515
The nature of society will have it so that where there is troop against troop, as where our Duke of Orleans challenged Henry, king of England, a hundred against a hundred; three hundred against as many, as the Argians against the Lacedaemonians; three to three, as the Horatii against the Curiatii, the multitude on either side is considered but as one single man: the hazard, wherever there is company, being confused and mixed.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3169
As some nations have their wives in common, and some others have every one his own, is not the same seen among beasts, and marriages better kept than ours? As to the society and confederation they make amongst themselves, to league together and to give one another mutual assistance, is it not known that oxen, hogs, and other animals, at the cry of any of their kind that we offend, all the herd run to his aid and embody for his defence? The fish Scarus, when he has swallowed the angler’s hook, his fellows all crowd about him and gnaw the line in pieces; and if, by chance, one be got into the bow net, the others present him their tails on the outside, which he holding fast with his teeth, they after that manner disengage and draw him out.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6336
If I myself, to anticipate accusation and discovery, confess enough to frustrate his malice, as he conceives, ‘tis but reason that he make use of his right of amplification, and to wire-draw my vices as far as he can; attack has its rights beyond justice; and let him make the roots of those errors I have laid open to him shoot up into trees: let him make his use, not only of those I am really affected with, but also of those that only threaten me; injurious vices, both in quality and number; let him cudgel me that way.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1616
ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires, do not leave us because we forsake our native country:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3562
Ignoratur enim, quæ sit natura animai; Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur; Et simnl intereat nobiscum morte dirempta; An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas, An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3743
“Thus ev’ry thing is changed in course of time, What now is valued passes soon its prime; To which some other thing, despised before, Succeeds, and grows in vogue still more and more; And once received, too faint all praises seem, So highly it is rais’d in men’s esteem.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5746
“Haec si tu postules Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas, Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6349
“But, in these travels, you will be taken ill in some wretched place, where nothing can be had to relieve you.” I always carry most things necessary about me; and besides, we cannot evade Fortune if she once resolves to attack us. I need nothing extraordinary when I am sick. I will not be beholden to my bolus to do that for me which nature cannot.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1848
[“It is an effeminate and flimsy opinion, nor more so in pain than in pleasure, in which, while we are at our ease, we cannot bear without a cry the sting of a bee. The whole business is to commend thyself.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 22.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3853
Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of necessity grant them this, that it is by their means and mediation that all our instruction is directed.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1108
3.]--that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 64
‘He had only been able to form a judgment of them,’ said he, ‘through a certain French monk, not understanding French himself’”--we leave Montaigne himself to tell the story--“and he received so complacently my excuses and explanations on each of the passages which had been animadverted upon by the French monk, that he concluded by leaving me at liberty to revise the text agreeably to the dictates of my own conscience.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7146
I, who but crawl upon the earth, hate this inhuman wisdom, that will have us despise and hate all culture of the body; I look upon it as an equal injustice to loath natural pleasures as to be too much in love with them. Xerxes was a blockhead, who, environed with all human delights, proposed a reward to him who could find out others; but he is not much less so who cuts off any of those pleasures that nature has provided for him. A man should neither pursue nor avoid them, but receive them.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3974
“Credit jam digna pericula Caesar Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit, Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe sedentem, Tam magno petiere mari;”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2051
“Et, quo ferre velint, permittere vulnera ventis Ensis habet vires; et gens quaecumque virorum est, Bella gerit gladiis.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6901
“So in a running stream one wave we see After another roll incessantly, And as they glide, each does successively Pursue the other, each the other fly By this that’s evermore pushed on, and this By that continually preceded is: The water still does into water swill, Still the same brook, but different water still.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 625
The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to their guests:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6601
[“Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs.”--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 675
“Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7172
There are very few examples of life, full and pure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose to ourselves those that are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any one service, and rather pull us back; corrupters rather than correctors of manners.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2349
The natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6402
Do but hear a philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency immediately strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that touches or stings your conscience; ‘tis not to this they address themselves. Is not this true? It made Aristo say, that neither a bath nor a lecture did aught unless it scoured and made men clean.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 375
‘Tis a common practice. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, “Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?”--[Cicero, Tusc. Quest., iii. 26.]--Who has not seen peevish gamesters chew and swallow the cards, and swallow the dice, in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes whipped the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employed a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the river Gyndas, for the fright it had put him into in passing over it; and Caligula demolished a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his mother had once enjoyed there.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5723
“Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6085
“Equidem plura transcribo, quam credo: nam nec affirmare sustineo, de quibus dubito, nec subducere quae accepi;”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6192
His fellow-citizens were in mutiny against their magistrates; he being a man of great authority in the city of Capua, found means one day to shut up the Senators in the palace; and calling the people together in the market-place, there told them that the day was now come wherein at full liberty they might revenge themselves on the tyrants by whom they had been so long oppressed, and whom he had now, all alone and unarmed, at his mercy.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5549
I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one’s life than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most noble, as being the hardest to keep:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5162
Let us take that which is most necessary and profitable for human society; it will be marriage; and yet the council of the saints find the contrary much better, excluding from it the most venerable vocation of man: as we design those horses for stallions of which we have the least esteem.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1609
[“Good men forsooth are scarce: there are hardly as many as there are gates of Thebes or mouths of the rich Nile.” --Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 26.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4018
these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of her teeth.--[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1540
Whatever I shall say upon this subject, I am of necessity to invade some of the bounds of custom, so careful has she been to shut up all the avenues. I was disputing with myself in this shivering season, whether the fashion of going naked in those nations lately discovered is imposed upon them by the hot temperature of the air, as we say of the Indians and Moors, or whether it be the original fashion of mankind.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4749
[“In the waters of the Rhine Caesar was my general; here at Rome he is my fellow. Crime levels those whom it polluted.” --Lucan, v. 289.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1763
[“Death has been, or will come: there is nothing of the present in it.”--Estienne de la Boetie, Satires.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2042
I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback, for it is the place where, whether well or sick, I find myself most at ease. Plato recommends it for health, as also Pliny says it is good for the stomach and the joints. Let us go further into this matter since here we are.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5715
“Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu, Deserit imbelles thalamos.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5429
[“When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing.” (Or:) “It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body.” --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2387
The Stoics say, that it is living according to nature in a wise man to, take his leave of life, even in the height of prosperity, if he do it opportunely; and in a fool to prolong it, though he be miserable, provided he be not indigent of those things which they repute to be according to nature.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2253
And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know not what course of nature, promise to themselves some years beyond it, could they be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which we are by a natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to do.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7189
[“Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about, or dreams which delude the senses in sleep.”--AEneid, x. 641.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6918
I would venture myself with such justice as would take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill; where I had as much to hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient pay to a man who does better than not to do amiss. Our justice presents to us but one hand, and that the left hand, too; let him be who he may, he shall be sure to come off with loss.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5090
And notably the cause of the laws and of the ancient government of a kingdom, has this always annexed to it, that even those who, for their own private interest, invade them, excuse, if they do not honour, the defenders.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1000
“Mandane, in Xenophon, asking Cyrus how he would do to learn justice, and the other virtues amongst the Medes, having left all his masters behind him in Persia? He made answer, that he had learned those things long since; that his master had often made him a judge of the differences amongst his schoolfellows, and had one day whipped him for giving a wrong sentence.”--W.C.H.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 789
And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend upon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1485
And it is one very remarkable feature in their marriages, that the same jealousy our wives have to hinder and divert us from the friendship and familiarity of other women, those employ to promote their husbands’ desires, and to procure them many spouses; for being above all things solicitous of their husbands’ honour, ‘tis their chiefest care to seek out, and to bring in the most companions they can, forasmuch as it is a testimony of the husband’s virtue.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5044
I have coveted understanding for the service of my present and real conveniences, and not to lay up a stock for my posterity. He who has anything of value in him, let him make it appear in his conduct, in his ordinary discourses, in his courtships, and his quarrels: in play, in bed, at table, in the management of his affairs, in his economics. Those whom I see make good books in ill breeches, should first have mended their breeches, if they would have been ruled by me.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4896
Let her allow this vocal frailty to disease, if it be neither cordial nor stomachic, and permit the ordinary ways of expressing grief by sighs, sobs, palpitations, and turning pale, that nature has put out of our power; provided the courage be undaunted, and the tones not expressive of despair, let her be satisfied. What matter the wringing of our hands, if we do not wring our thoughts?