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 137 of 145
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Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6882
And yet I am not much pleased with his opinion, who thought by the multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges in cutting out for them their several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty and latitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form; and they but fool themselves, who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recalling us to the express words of the Bible: forasmuch as our mind does not find the field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another than to deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness in commentary than in invention. We see how much he was mistaken, for we have more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and more than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds of Epicurus:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2797
Such, for example, amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not ashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has been laid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were then spread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; ‘tis the naked and inform matter of history, and of which every one may make his profit, according to his understanding.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6607
I am impatient to be doing where my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance. Let him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and, moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had better call in somebody else.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1029
For my own part, there is nothing I would not sooner do than that, neither have I said so much of others, but to get a better opportunity to explain myself. Nor in this do I glance at the composers of centos, who declare themselves for such; of which sort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, and particularly one under the name of Capilupus, besides the ancients.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7239
they lie with their lovers learnedly What need have they of anything but to live beloved and honoured What sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another” What step ends the near and what step begins the remote What they ought to do when they come to be men What we have not seen, we are forced to receive from other hands What, shall so much knowledge be lost Whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of a drug When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself When jealousy seizes these poor souls When their eyes give the lie to their tongue When time begins to wear things out of memory When we have got it, we want something else “When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet learning?” When you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong Where the lion’s skin is too short Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too Wherever the mind is perplexed, it is in an entire disorder Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be some great thing Whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word Who can flee from himself Who discern no riches but in pomp and show Who does not boast of some rare recipe Who escapes being talked of at the same rate Who ever saw one physician approve of another’s prescription Who has once been a very fool, will never after be very wise Who would weigh him without the honour and grandeur of his end Whoever expects punishment already suffers it Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger Whosoever despises his own life, is always master Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 655
Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his withered body and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, “Thou fanciest, then, that thou art yet alive.”--[Seneca, Ep., 77.]--Should a man fall into this condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of enduring such a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy and, as it were, an insensible pace, step by step conducts us to that miserable state, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is troublesome and painful.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4076
To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the beginning of their progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great dangers I do not remember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1157
By which means our very exercises and recreations, running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will prove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashion and mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. ‘Tis not a soul, ‘tis not a body that we are training up, but a man, and we ought not to divide him.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5149
he who never killed a man whom he had overcome; who, for the inestimable benefit of restoring the liberty of his country, made conscience of killing a tyrant or his accomplices without due form of justice: and who concluded him to be a wicked man, how good a citizen soever otherwise, who amongst his enemies in battle spared not his friend and his guest.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3611
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness; capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the foot;
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6450
The care of the dead is recommended to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these dead; I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of those of my own house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre, and the Tiber before I knew the Seine.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4368
I have often considered whence this custom that we so religiously observe should spring, of being more highly offended with the reproach of a vice so familiar to us than with any other, and that it should be the highest insult that can in words be done us to reproach us with a lie. Upon examination, I find that it is natural most to defend the defects with which we are most tainted.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2786
The younger Cicero, who resembled his father in nothing but in name, whilst commanding in Asia, had several strangers one day at his table, and, amongst the rest, Cestius seated at the lower end, as men often intrude to the open tables of the great.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 866
After this manner did he--[Agesilaus.]--who suspended them for four-and-twenty hours, and he who, for once shifted a day in the calendar, and that other--[Alexander the Great.]--who of the month of June made a second of May.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1782
Plato fears our too vehemently engaging ourselves with pain and pleasure, forasmuch as these too much knit and ally the soul to the body; whereas I rather, quite contrary, by reason it too much separates and disunites them. As an enemy is made more fierce by our flight, so pain grows proud to see us truckle under her. She will surrender upon much better terms to them who make head against her: a man must oppose and stoutly set himself against her.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4345
XVIII. Of giving the lie. XIX. Of liberty of conscience. XX. That we taste nothing pure. XXI. Against idleness. XXII. Of Posting. XXIII. Of ill means employed to a good end. XXIV. Of the Roman grandeur. XXV. Not to counterfeit being sick. XXVI. Of thumbs. XXVII. Cowardice the mother of cruelty. XXVIII. All things have their season. XXIX. Of virtue. XXX. Of a monstrous child. XXXI. Of anger.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6810
“I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, I shall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to be wiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things that are above and below us. I have neither frequented nor known death, nor have ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom to inform myself. Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part, I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3368
“Eudoxus wished and begged of the gods that he might once see the sun near at hand, to comprehend the form, greatness, and beauty of it; even though he should thereby be immediately burned.” He would at the price of his life purchase a knowledge, of which the use and possession should at the same time be taken from him; and for this sudden and vanishing knowledge lose all the other knowledge he had in present, or might afterwards have acquired.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4092
Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people, that he made no more account of that which came from above than of that which came from below. He [Cicero] says more:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6650
Had fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have brought this miracle into nature. There was afterwards discovered so much simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances, that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought of most such things, were they well examined:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5920
‘Tis hard to keep measure in so immeasurable a power; yet so it is that it is, even to those who are not of the best nature, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon record, and where the least benefit redounds to so many men, and where your talent of administration, like that of preachers, principally addresses itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and easily content.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 316
[“Love deprives me of all my faculties: Lesbia, when once in thy presence, I have not left the power to tell my distracting passion: my tongue becomes torpid; a subtle flame creeps through my veins; my ears tingle in deafness; my eyes are veiled with darkness.” Catullus, Epig. li. 5]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2582
Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value and estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, ‘tis but to be liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should be now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour made cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is no virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 867
The Lacedaemonians themselves, who were so religious observers of the laws of their country, being straitened by one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden to choose the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their affairs necessarily requiring, that Lysander should again take upon him that command, they made one Aratus admiral; ‘tis true, but withal, Lysander went general of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of their ambassadors being sent to the Athenians to obtain the revocation of some decree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was forbidden to take away the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him to turn it only, that being not forbidden; and Plutarch commends Philopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not only according to the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public necessity so required.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 851
The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays indifferently upon all to yield absolute obedience to the civil magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4274
There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine; no soul so buried in sloth and ignorance, but it will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that a man blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of our masters: but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so; which I say to accuse my own; for whether it be through infirmity or negligence (and to neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have in our hands, and what nearest concerns the use of life, is far from my doctrine) there is not a soul in the world so awkward as mine, and so ignorant of many common things, and such as a man cannot without shame fail to know.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2469
And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he does briskly--and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled at, yet nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does not encounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3757
And Apuleius says of men: _Sigillatim mortales, cunctim perpetui._ “That they are mortal in particular, and immortal in general.” Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an Egyptian priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other countries.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3259
Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the reason why that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest value upon pleasure, has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from ill is the greatest good that man can hope for or desire; as Ennius says,--
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5182
We, who live private lives, not exposed to any other view than our own, ought chiefly to have settled a pattern within ourselves by which to try our actions: and according to that, sometimes to encourage and sometimes to correct ourselves. I have my laws and my judicature to judge of myself, and apply myself more to these than to any other rules: I do, indeed, restrain my actions according to others; but extend them not by any other rule than my own.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6552
I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3965
When we judge of another’s assurance in death, which, without doubt, is the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one thing, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived to that period.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 244
He diverged from his route to pay a visit to the mourning ladies at Montresor, where are the remains of his two brothers and his grandmother, and came to us again in this town, whence we shall resume our journey shortly. The journey to Normandy is postponed. The King has despatched MM. De Bellieure and de la Guiche to M. de Guise to summon him to court; we shall be there on Thursday.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 527
I once heard of a prince, and a great captain, having a narration given him as he sat at table of the proceeding against Monsieur de Vervins, who was sentenced to death for having surrendered Boulogne to the English, --[To Henry VIII. in 1544]--openly maintaining that a soldier could not justly be put to death for want of courage.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2305
No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal. Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so often at his wits’ end upon every light suspicion of his captains conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6185
[“Love the government, such as you see it to be. If it be royal, love royalty; if it is a republic of any sort, still love it; for God himself created thee therein.”]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7152
These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for what will not fancy do? But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it. Will they not seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives? I hate that we should be enjoined to have our minds in the clouds, when our bodies are at table; I would not have the mind nailed there, nor wallow there; I would have it take place there and sit, but not lie down.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6875
[“So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I should have sufficient courage to condemn them.”---Livy, xxxix. 21.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2063
But in this discourse of horses and horsemanship, we are not to forget the pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol, a doctor of divinity, upon his mule, whom Monstrelet reports always to have ridden sideways through the streets of Paris like a woman. He says also, elsewhere, that the Gascons had terrible horses, that would wheel in their full speed, which the French, Picards, Flemings, and Brabanters looked upon as a miracle, “having never seen the like before,” which are his very words.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5960
When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger: I advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other. What will the angry man answer? Passion has already confounded his judgment; agitation has usurped the place of reason.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1285
O Athenians, what this man says, I will do Obstinacy and contention are common qualities Occasion to La Boetie to write his “Voluntary Servitude” Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood Philosophy is that which instructs us to live Philosophy looked upon as a vain and fantastic name Preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader Reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls Silence, therefore, and modesty are very advantageous qualities So many trillions of men, buried before us Sparing and an husband of his knowledge The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness Their labour is not to delivery, but about conception There is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living Things grow familiar to men’s minds by being often seen To condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption To contemn what we do not comprehend To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To know by rote, is no knowledge Tongue will grow too stiff to bend Totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything Unjust to exact from me what I do not owe Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5274
I should commend a soul of several stages, that knows both how to stretch and to slacken itself; that finds itself at ease in all conditions whither fortune leads it; that can discourse with a neighbour, of his building, his hunting, his quarrels; that can chat with a carpenter or a gardener with pleasure.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3727
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to believe that men perform the greatest actions, and nearest approaching the Divinity, when they are furious, mad, and beside themselves? We better ourselves by the privation of our reason, and drilling it. The two natural ways to enter into the cabinet of the gods, and there to foresee the course of destiny, are fury and sleep.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 922
Princes, however, do wisely to publish the informations they receive of all the practices against their lives, to possess men with an opinion they have so good intelligence that nothing can be plotted against them, but they have present notice of it.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7097
“Res, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, Quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt, Minus mirandum est.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2672
And I have known a certain lord, one of the principal officers of the crown, who, having in reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearly revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years of age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession of all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part, lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no means reasonable.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1895
what of all that, if he be a fool? even pleasure and good fortune are not relished without vigour and understanding:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6035
Those of Mexico, after the ceremonies of their king’s coronation are over, dare no more look him in the face; but, as if they had deified him by his royalty. Amongst the oaths they make him take to maintain their religion, their laws, and liberties, to be valiant, just, and mild, he moreover swears to make the sun run his course in his wonted light, to drain the clouds at fit seasons, to make rivers run their course, and to cause the earth to bear all things necessary for his people.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3870
Let an understanding man imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing, and consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect would bring upon him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that of how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such another sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5085
It would be a kind of treason to proceed after this manner in our own domestic affairs, wherein a man must of necessity be of the one side or the other; though for a man who has no office or express command to call him out, to sit still I hold it more excusable (and yet I do not excuse myself upon these terms) than in foreign expeditions, to which, however, according to our laws, no man is pressed against his will.