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 15 of 145
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Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 904
Those who preach to princes so circumspect and vigilant a jealousy and distrust, under colour of security, preach to them ruin and dishonour: nothing noble can be performed without danger. I know a person, naturally of a very great daring and enterprising courage, whose good fortune is continually marred by such persuasions, that he keep himself close surrounded by his friends, that he must not hearken to any reconciliation with his ancient enemies, that he must stand aloof, and not trust his person in hands stronger than his own, what promises or offers soever they may make him, or what advantages soever he may see before him. And I know another, who has unexpectedly advanced his fortunes by following a clear contrary advice.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4050
Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of the contempt of glory; and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there was none more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds from the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of many very hurtful treasons in it. There is nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favour with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made use of to corrupt the chastity of women as to wheedle and entertain them with their own praises. The first charm the Syrens made use of to allure Ulysses is of this nature:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4091
He that makes it his business to please them, will have enough to do and never have done; ‘tis a mark that can never be aimed at or hit:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 442
I have an honest lad to my tailor, whom I never knew guilty of one truth, no, not when it had been to his advantage. If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take for certain the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite, without bound or limit. The Pythagoreans make good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7150
But I, who am of a mixed and heavy condition, cannot snap so soon at this one simple object, but that I negligently suffer myself to be carried away with the present pleasures of the, general human law, intellectually sensible, and sensibly intellectual. The Cyrenaic philosophers will have it that as corporal pains, so corporal pleasures are more powerful, both as double and as more just.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4393
He had a vision like that of Marcus Brutus, that first threatened him in Gaul, and afterward appeared to him in Persia just before his death.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7170
He was seen, for seven-and-twenty years together, to endure hunger, poverty, the indocility of his children, and the nails of his wife, with the same countenance. And, in the end, calumny, tyranny, imprisonment, fetters, and poison. But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any rule of civility? he was also the man of the whole army with whom the advantage in drinking, remained.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3899
Let there be a beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6937
The false steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was most secure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly swears and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is made to its testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in anything of moment, nor warrant it in another person’s concerns: and were it not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want of good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take the truth from another’s mouth than from my own.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4769
Hearing that his people were besieged, he passed through the enemy’s army in disguise to go and encourage them with his presence. Having crossed over to Dyrrachium with very slender forces, and seeing the remainder of his army which he had left to Antony’s conduct slow in following him, he undertook alone to repass the sea in a very great storms and privately stole away to fetch the rest of his forces, the ports on the other side being seized by Pompey, and the whole sea being in his possession.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2509
What are you thinking of?”--“I was thinking,” replied the other, “to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and whether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it.” This man philosophises not unto death only, but in death itself.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7098
[“‘Tis less wonder, what men practise, think, care for, see, and do when waking, (should also run in their heads and disturb them when they are asleep) and which affect their feelings, if they happen to any in sleep.”--Attius, cited in Cicero, De Divin., i. 22.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 886
But it did not so happen with our prince, his moderation and mercy not so securing him, but that he afterwards fell into the toils of the like treason,--[The Duc de Guise was assassinated in 1563 by Poltrot.]--so vain and futile a thing is human prudence; throughout all our projects, counsels and precautions, Fortune will still be mistress of events.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2195
And yet I have ever found myself little subject to epidemic diseases, that are caught, either by conversing with the sick or bred by the contagion of the air, and have escaped from those of my time, of which there have been several sorts in our cities and armies. We read of Socrates, that though he never departed from Athens during the frequent plagues that infested the city, he only was never infected.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1610
the contagion is very dangerous in the crowd. A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them both are dangerous things, either to resemble them because they are many or to hate many because they are unresembling to ourselves. Merchants who go to sea are in the right when they are cautious that those who embark with them in the same bottom be neither dissolute blasphemers nor vicious other ways, looking upon such society as unfortunate.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4538
Poris, startled at this protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to transport them to Athens, and there commit them to the custody of some faithful friends of his. They took, therefore, the opportunity of an annual feast which was celebrated at AEnia in honour of AEneas, and thither they went. Having appeared by day at the public ceremonies and banquet, they stole the night following into a vessel laid ready for the purpose, to escape away by sea.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3215
If beasts then had all the virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and stoical perfection, they would still be beasts, and would not be comparable to man, miserable, wicked, mad, man. For, in short, whatever is not as we are is nothing worth; and God, to procure himself an esteem among us, must put himself into that shape, as we shall show anon.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3305
For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6955
I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to bring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to marshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle our inconstancy, and set it in order. I do not only find it hard to piece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly to design each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variform they are with diverse lights.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6310
“Uxor, si cesses, aut to amare cogitat, Aut tete amari, aut potare, aut animo obsequi; Et tibi bene esse soli, cum sibi sit male;”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1833
According to this rule, they are the richest people in the world who are set to guard the walls and gates of a wealthy city. All moneyed men I conclude to be covetous. Plato places corporal or human goods in this order: health, beauty, strength, riches; and riches, says he, are not blind, but very clear-sighted, when illuminated by prudence.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4065
Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses to have entered upon an inheritance contrary to his conscience, not only not against law, but even by the determination of the laws themselves; and M.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1137
Socrates, her first minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it aside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress; ‘tis the nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to pleasure.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1694
Demosthenes’ companions in the embassy to Philip, extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge, than for a king’:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6932
Oh, what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity, whereon to repose a well-ordered head!
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4730
To conclude, this sole vice, in my opinion, spoiled in him the most rich and beautiful nature that ever was, and has rendered his name abominable to all good men, in that he would erect his glory upon the ruins of his country and the subversion of the greatest and most flourishing republic the world shall ever see.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5714
They may say there is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are on their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part it may fall out otherwise. For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made a law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, the judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked, and the women but to the girdle only. When they come to try us they do not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6124
As to the rest, I have sufficiently settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have, and live contentedly:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5881
Certain Spaniards, coasting the sea in quest of their mines, landed in a fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled country, and there made to the inhabitants their accustomed professions: “that they were peaceable men, who were come from a very remote country, and sent on the behalf of the King of Castile, the greatest prince of the habitable world, to whom the Pope, God’s vicegerent upon earth, had given the principality of all the Indies; that if they would become tributaries to him, they should be very gently and courteously used”; at the same time requiring of them victuals for their nourishment, and gold whereof to make some pretended medicine; setting forth, moreover, the belief in one only God, and the truth of our religion, which they advised them to embrace, whereunto they also added some threats.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 117
It was only on the Sunday that he began to converse with me on any subject beyond the immediate one of his illness, and what the ancient doctors thought of it: we had not touched on public affairs, for I found at the very outset that he had a dislike to them.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3883
Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger being lapped over it, it feels so like two that a man will have much ado to persuade himself there is but one; the end of the two fingers feeling each of them one at the same time; for that the senses are very often masters of our reason, and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and knows to be false, is frequently seen.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3541
Quæ mare compescant causæ; quid temperet annum; Stellæ sponte suâ, jussæve, vagentur et errent; Quid premat obscurum lunæ, quid proférât orbem; Quid velit et posait rerum concordia discors;
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3485
“As if any thing could be more unhappy than man, who is insulted over by his own imagination.” ‘Tis far from honouring him who made us, to honour him that we have made. Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served with as much religion and belief of miracles. The Thracians, in return of the benefits they had received from Agesilaus, came to bring him word that they had canonized him: “Has your nation,” said he to them, “the power to make gods of whom they please?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5335
These have been my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak not of those I owe to the world by civil obligation.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2811
It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of honest reason. No corruption could so universally have infected men that some one would not escape the contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious, whence it might happen that he judged other men by himself.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2728
“They had,” says he, “armour so woven as to have all the scales fall over one another like so many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body, and yet were of such resistance, that our darts hitting upon them, would rebound” (these were the coats of mail our forefathers were so constantly wont to use).
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1874
why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes? He then discovers nothing to you but such parts as are not in the least his own, and conceals those by which alone one may rightly judge of his value. ‘Tis the price of the blade that you inquire into, not of the scabbard: you would not peradventure bid a farthing for him, if you saw him stripped.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 172
At this stage he proceeded, among other things, to pray me again and again, in a most affectionate manner, to give him a place; so that I was apprehensive that his reason might be impaired, particularly when, on my pointing out to him that he was doing himself harm, and that these were not of the words of a rational man, he did not yield at first, but redoubled his outcry, saying, “My brother, my brother!
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1767
But let us presuppose that in death we principally regard the pain; as also there is nothing to be feared in poverty but the miseries it brings along with it of thirst, hunger, cold, heat, watching, and the other inconveniences it makes us suffer, still we have nothing to do with anything but pain.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3529
Have I not read in Plato this divine saying, that “nature is nothing but enigmatic poesy!” As if a man might perhaps see a veiled and shady picture, breaking out here and there with an infinite variety of false lights to puzzle our conjectures: _Latent ista omnia crassis occullata et circumfusa tenebris; ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quæ penetrare in coelum, terram intrare, possit._ “All those things lie concealed and involved in so dark an obscurity that no point of human wit can be so sharp as to pierce heaven or penetrate the earth.” And certainly philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1951
We may here further compare him with Alexander in the great and dangerous storm that threatened him by the sedition of the tribune Metellus, who, attempting to publish a decree for the calling in of Pompey with his army into the city at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy, was only and that stoutly opposed by Cato, so that very sharp language and bitter menaces passed betwixt them in the senate about that affair; but it was the next day, in the forenoon, that the controversy was to be decided, where Metellus, besides the favour of the people and of Caesar--at that time of Pompey’s faction--was to appear accompanied with a rabble of slaves and gladiators; and Cato only fortified with his own courage and constancy; so that his relations, domestics, and many virtuous people of his friends were in great apprehensions for him; and to that degree, that some there were who passed over the whole night without sleep, eating, or drinking, for the danger they saw him running into; his wife and sisters did nothing but weep and torment themselves in his house; whereas, he, on the contrary, comforted every one, and after having supped after his usual manner, went to bed, and slept profoundly till morning, when one of his fellow-tribunes roused him to go to the encounter.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6714
Do but observe how many slight and frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5132
When Amurath I., more grievously to punish his subjects who had taken part in the parricide rebellion of his son, ordained that their nearest kindred should assist in the execution, I find it very handsome in some of them to have rather chosen to be unjustly thought guilty of the parricide of another than to serve justice by a parricide of their own.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4413
[“Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves, they were astonished, and knew not what to do.”--Livy, xxxii. 20.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1692
‘Tis a kind of mockery and offence to extol a man for qualities misbecoming his condition, though otherwise commendable in themselves, but such as ought not, however, to be his chief talent; as if a man should commend a king for being a good painter, a good architect, a good marksman, or a good runner at the ring: commendations that add no honour, unless mentioned altogether and in the train of those that are properly applicable to him, namely, justice and the science of governing and conducting his people both in peace and war.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 273
If there is any important news, I will despatch an express at once, and you may conclude that nothing is stirring if you do not hear from me: at the same time begging you to bear in mind that movements of this kind are wont to be so sudden and unexpected that, if they occur, they will grasp me by the throat, before they say a word. I will do what I can to collect news, and for this purpose I will make a point of visiting and seeing men of every shade of opinion.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 607
It is full both of reason and piety, too, to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended His life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways has death to surprise us?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4250
Gain tempts to the first breach of faith, and almost always presents itself, as in all other ill acts, sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken for some kind of advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievous consequences, throwing this prince out of all correspondence and negotiation, by this example of infidelity.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6091
A hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge A man must have courage to fear A man never speaks of himself without loss A man’s accusations of himself are always believed Agitation has usurped the place of reason All judgments in gross are weak and imperfect Any argument if it be carried on with method Apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand Arrogant ignorance Avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten Being as impatient of commanding as of being commanded Defer my revenge to another and better time Desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled Detest in others the defects which are more manifest in us Disdainful, contemplative, serious and grave as the ass Do not, nevertheless, always believe myself Events are a very poor testimony of our worth and parts.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3003
‘Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit How does he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal motions of animals?--from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes to them?