Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1493

They said, that in the first place they thought it very strange that so many tall men, wearing beards, strong, and well armed, who were about the king (‘tis like they meant the Swiss of the guard), should submit to obey a child, and that they did not rather choose out one amongst themselves to command.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6034

Melanthius being asked what he thought of the tragedy of Dionysius, “I could not see it,” said he, “it was so clouded with language”; so most of those who judge of the discourses of great men ought to say, “I did not understand his words, they were so clouded with gravity, grandeur, and majesty.” Antisthenes one day tried to persuade the Athenians to give order that their asses might be employed in tilling the ground as well as the horses were; to which it was answered that that animal was not destined for such a service: “That’s all one,” replied he, “you have only to order it: for the most ignorant and incapable men you employ in the commands of your wars incontinently become worthy enough, because you employ them”; to which the custom of so many people, who canonise the king they have chosen out of their own body, and are not content only to honour, but must adore them, comes very near.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1466

And they are, moreover, happy in this, that they only covet so much as their natural necessities require: all beyond that is superfluous to them: men of the same age call one another generally brothers, those who are younger, children; and the old men are fathers to all. These leave to their heirs in common the full possession of goods, without any manner of division, or other title than what nature bestows upon her creatures, in bringing them into the world.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3223

“Disease thy couch shall flee, And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see Long years of happiness, till now unknown.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5795

I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me If they can only be kind to us out of pity In everything else a man may keep some decorum In those days, the tailor took measure of it Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience Judgment of duty principally lies in the will Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs “Let a man take which course he will,” said he; “he will repent.” Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage Love them the less for our own faults Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love Men make them (the rules) without their (women’s) help Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime O, the furious advantage of opportunity!

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1930

Diocletian, who wore a crown so fortunate and revered, resigned it to retire to the felicity of a private life; and some time after the necessity of public affairs requiring that he should reassume his charge, he made answer to those who came to court him to it: “You would not offer,” said he, “to persuade me to this, had you seen the fine order of the trees I have planted in my orchard, and the fair melons I have sown in my garden.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3435

It was a strange fancy to think to gratify the divine bounty with our afflictions; like the Lacedemonians, who regaled their Diana with the tormenting of young boys, whom they caused to be whipped for her sake, very often to death. It was a savage humour to imagine to gratify the architect by the subversion of his building, and to think to take away the punishment due to the guilty by punishing the innocent; and that poor Iphigenia, at the port of Aulis, should by her death and immolation acquit, towards God, the whole army of the Greeks from all the crimes they had committed;

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2005

But then these arguments would be as ready to stand up for the other side; that a general ought rather to lessen in his men their solicitude of preserving themselves than to increase it; that by such means they will be in a double fear of hazarding their persons, as it will be a double temptation to the enemy to fight with greater resolution where so great booty and so rich spoils are to be obtained; and this very thing has been observed in former times, notably to encourage the Romans against the Samnites.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4510

Our fathers contented themselves with revenging an insult with the lie, the lie with a box of the ear, and so forward; they were valiant enough not to fear their adversaries, living and provoked we tremble for fear so soon as we see them on foot. And that this is so, does not our noble practice of these days, equally to prosecute to death both him that has offended us and him we have offended, make it out? ‘Tis also a kind of cowardice that has introduced the custom of having seconds, thirds, and fourths in our duels; they were formerly duels; they are now skirmishes, rencontres, and battles. Solitude was, doubtless, terrible to those who were the first inventors of this practice:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3658

Now, to bring this seed to do its work, how many contrary opinions do they set on foot? Aristotle and Democritus are of opinion that women have no sperm, and that ‘tis nothing but a sweat that they distil in the heat of pleasure and motion, and that contributes nothing at all to generation. Galen, on the contrary, and his followers, believe that without the concurrence of seeds there can be no generation.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6006

There were never so many historians: it is, indeed, good and of use to read them, for they furnish us everywhere with excellent and laudable instructions from the magazine of their memory, which, doubtless, is of great concern to the help of life; but ‘tis not that we seek for now: we examine whether these relaters and collectors of things are commendable themselves.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3785

nature should say the same to their contests and debates. Some say that our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting to nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another in not suffering ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this fancy seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2233

And might it not be said, that an edict enjoining all people but such as are public professors of divinity, to be very reserved in writing of religion, would carry with it a very good colour of utility and justice --and to me, amongst the rest peradventure, to hold my prating? I have been told that even those who are not of our Church nevertheless amongst themselves expressly forbid the name of God to be used in common discourse, nor so much even by way of interjection, exclamation, assertion of a truth, or comparison; and I think them in the right: upon what occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us, it ought always to be done with the greatest reverence and devotion.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 165

As the evening approached, he began perceptibly to sink; and while I supped, he sent for me to come, being no more than the shadow of a man, or, as he put it himself, ‘non homo, sed species hominis’; and he said to me with the utmost difficulty: “My brother, my friend, please God I may realise the imaginations I have just enjoyed.” Afterwards, having waited for some time while he remained silent, and by painful efforts was drawing long sighs (for his tongue at this point began to refuse its functions), I said, “What are they?” “Grand, grand!” he replied.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3312

who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in that little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who, having been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have moreover hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised it to the highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5399

Miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself More supportable to be always alone than never to be so.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 483

[“As to those who understand the language of birds, and who rather consult the livers of animals other than their own, I had rather hear them than attend to them.” --Cicero, De Divin., i. 57, ex Pacuvio]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5711

But ‘tis true withal that ‘tis contrary to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature of violence if it be constant. And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep such a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as unnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not discern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without any astonishment or miracle at all?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2266

“Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3564

Crates and Dicæarchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all, but that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a substance moving of itself; Thales, a nature without repose; Aedepiades, an exercising of the senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles, of blood:--

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3161

At which the people breaking into loud acclamations of joy, the emperor caused the slave to be called, to know from him the cause of so strange an event; who thereupon told him a new and a very strange story: “My master,” said he, “being pro-consul in Africa, I was constrained, by his severity and cruel usage, being daily beaten, to steal from him and run away; and, to hide myself secretly from a person of so great authority in the province, I thought it my best way to fly to the solitudes, sands, and uninhabitable parts of that country, resolving that in case the means of supporting life should chance to fail me, to make some shift or other to kill myself.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1706

There is something like this in these two other philosophers, for they also promise eternity to the letters they write to their friends; but ‘tis after another manner, and by accommodating themselves, for a good end, to the vanity of another; for they write to them that if the concern of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet detain them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them, let them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to ensure them that were there nothing else but the letters thus written to them, those letters will render their names as known and famous as their own public actions could do.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3151

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould; the weight and importance of the actions of princes considered, we persuade ourselves that they must be produced by some as weighty and important causes; but we are deceived; for they are pushed on, and pulled back in their motions, by the same springs that we are in our little undertakings.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6841

[“It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many that may blunt it.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 33.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5917

But if I was to compare them with my own, I should then also say that the first is as much according to my capacity, and from desire, which I conform to my capacity, as the second is far beyond it; that I could not approach the last but with veneration, the other I could readily attain by use.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4106

“Non quicquid turbida Roma Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5970

Therefore it is that Plato in his Republic prohibits this exercise to fools and ill-bred people. To what end do you go about to inquire of him, who knows nothing to the purpose? A man does no injury to the subject, when he leaves it to seek how he may treat it; I do not mean by an artificial and scholastic way, but by a natural one, with a sound understanding. What will it be in the end?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1375

This is a subtle consideration of philosophy. A man may both be too much in love with virtue, and be excessive in a just action. Holy Writ agrees with this, Be not wiser than you should, but be soberly wise.--[St. Paul, Epistle to the Romans, xii. 3.]--I have known a great man,

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1125

Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6755

At last, I saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune’s favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and attach myself and look to myself all the more closely. Men on all occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own, which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to arm himself.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3837

By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no fortune-teller, if we have this authority, but, if a man will take the pains to tumble and toss, and narrowly to peep into all the folds and glosses of his words, he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he will.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1703

Neither those stories nor my quotations always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them: they carry sometimes besides what I apply them to, the seed of a more rich and a bolder matter, and sometimes, collaterally, a more delicate sound both to myself who will say no more about it in this place, and to others who shall be of my humour.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5142

But Timoleon’s comportment in this expedition soon made his cause more clear, so worthily and virtuously he demeaned himself upon all occasions; and the good fortune that accompanied him in the difficulties he had to overcome in this noble employment, seemed to be strewed in his way by the gods, favourably conspiring for his justification.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5342

After I had some time applied myself to her grief, I did not attempt to cure her by strong and lively reasons, either because I had them not at hand, or because I thought to do my business better another way; neither did I make choice of any of those methods of consolation which philosophy prescribes: that what we complain of is no evil, according to Cleanthes; that it is a light evil, according to the Peripatetics; that to bemoan one’s self is an action neither commendable nor just, according to Chrysippus; nor this of Epicurus, more suitable to my way, of shifting the thoughts from afflicting things to those that are pleasing; nor making a bundle of all these together, to make use of upon occasion, according to Cicero; but, gently bending my discourse, and by little and little digressing, sometimes to subjects nearer, and sometimes more remote from the purpose, according as she was more intent on what I said, I imperceptibly led her from that sorrowful thought, and kept her calm and in good-humour whilst I continued there.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2857

If I had been born of a more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work; for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions, if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great thanks that I am free from several vices:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1021

Yet do I please myself with this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune to jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at a very great distance, and can say, “Ah, that is so.” I am farther satisfied to find that I have a quality, which every one is not blessed withal, which is, to discern the vast difference between them and me; and notwithstanding all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run on in their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that this comparison has laid open to my own view.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2473

I never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrusted with me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angry with myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters of importance he is reading when I stand near a great man. Never was man less inquisitive or less prying into other men’s affairs than I.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1778

The body, saving in the greater or less proportion, has but one and the same bent and bias; whereas the soul is variable into all sorts of forms; and subject to herself and to her own empire, all things whatsoever, both the senses of the body and all other accidents: and therefore it is that we ought to study her, to inquire into her, and to rouse up all her powerful faculties. There is neither reason, force, nor prescription that can anything prevail against her inclination and choice.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2151

To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic form of speaking? And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble of my chambermaid.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5801

Without instancing what has been told me, that the same thing often happens in beasts, especially hogs, who are out of all apprehension of danger; and what an acquaintance of mine told me of himself, that though very subject to it, the disposition to vomit has three or four times gone off him, being very afraid in a violent storm, as it happened to that ancient:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3346

they may produce the better effect; they have not so much thought to establish any certainty for us, as to show us how far they have proceeded in their search of truth: _Quam docti jingunt magis quam nôrunt_: “Which the learned rather feign than know.” Timæus, being to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the gods, the world, and men, proposes to speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient, if his reasons are probable as those of another; for that exact reasons were neither in his nor any other mortal hand; which one of his followers has thus imitated: _Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quæ dixero; sed, ut homunculus, probabilia conjecturâ sequens:_ “I will, as well as I am able, explain; affirming, yet not as the Pythian oracle, that what I say is fixed and certain, but like a mere man, that follows probabilities by conjecture.” And this, upon the natural and common subject of the contempt of death; he has elsewhere translated from the very words of Plato: _Si forte, de Deorum naturâ ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemiis in animo consequi-mur, haud erit mirum; oquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui disseram, hominem esse, et vos, qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis?_ “If perchance, when we discourse of the nature of God, and the world’s original, we cannot do it as we desire, it will be no great wonder.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5174

Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent, and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not as the conscience of an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man; always adding this clause, not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission, that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely and simply referring myself to the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach; I only relate.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3392

Alcmæon gave divinity to the sun, moon, and stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a spirit, spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted; Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by the ardour of light.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1398

In fine, there is no pleasure so just and lawful, where intemperance and excess are not to be condemned.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4528

The consul, Publius Rutilius, was the first who taught the soldiers to handle their arms with skill, and joined art with valour, not for the rise of private quarrel, but for war and the quarrels of the people of Rome; a popular and civil defence.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5708

Such proceedings as this that follows must be left to the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army through Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left the remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind the neighbouring mountains to give him a visit; where she publicly and in plain terms told him that the fame of his valour and victories had brought her thither to see him, and to make him an offer of her forces to assist him in the pursuit of his enterprises; and that, finding him so handsome, young, and vigorous, she, who was also perfect in all those qualities, advised that they might lie together, to the end that from the most valiant woman of the world and the bravest man then living, there might spring some great and wonderful issue for the time to come.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1350

I never inquire, when I am to take a footman, if he be chaste, but if he be diligent; and am not solicitous if my muleteer be given to gaming, as if he be strong and able; or if my cook be a swearer, if he be a good cook. I do not take upon me to direct what other men should do in the government of their families, there are plenty that meddle enough with that, but only give an account of my method in my own:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5688

I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is, methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming: which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three days before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take care for the interment.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4561

I find by experience, that there is a good deal to be said betwixt the flights and emotions of the soul or a resolute and constant habit; and very well perceive that there is nothing we may not do, nay, even to the surpassing the Divinity itself, says a certain person, forasmuch as it is more to render a man’s self impassible by his own study and industry, than to be so by his natural condition; and even to be able to conjoin to man’s imbecility and frailty a God-like resolution and assurance; but it is by fits and starts; and in the lives of those heroes of times past there are sometimes miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to exceed our natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and ‘tis hard to believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man can so thoroughly tinct and imbue the soul that they should become ordinary, and, as it were, natural in him.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4833

He that loves not his wife nor his friend so well as to prolong his life for them, but will obstinately die, is too delicate and too effeminate: the soul must impose this upon itself, when the utility of our friends so requires; we must sometimes lend ourselves to our friends, and when we would die for ourselves must break that resolution for them.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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