Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 269

If I could have found him, I might perhaps have pursued the gentler course, being uncertain of your views; but I entreat you nevertheless to feel no manner of doubt that I refuse to carry out any wishes of yours, and that, where your commands are concerned, I know no distinction of person or matter. I hope that you have in Guienne many as well affected to you as I am. They report that the Nantes galleys are advancing towards Brouage. M. the Marshal de Biron has not yet left.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5973

Here’s one who learnedly concludes against himself, and another who deafens you with prefaces and senseless digressions: an other falls into downright railing, and seeks a quarrel after the German fashion, to disengage himself from a wit that presses too hard upon him: and a last man sees nothing into the reason of the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation about you of dialectic clauses, and the formulas of his art.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 277

de Lansac is at Bourg, and has two war vessels, which remain in attendance on him. His functions are naval. I tell you what I learn, and mix up together the more or less probable hearsay of the town with actual matter of fact, that you may be in possession of everything. I beg you most humbly to return directly affairs may allow you to do so, and assure you that, meanwhile, we shall not spare our labour, or (if that were necessary) our life, to maintain the king’s authority throughout.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5043

I make no account of the goods I could not employ in the service of my life. Such as I am, I will be elsewhere than in paper: my art and industry have been ever directed to render myself good for something; my studies, to teach me to do, and not to write. I have made it my whole business to frame my life: this has been my trade and my work; I am less a writer of books than anything else.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1736

took that city, a great many let themselves be hanged rather than they would say, “God save the King.” And amongst that mean-souled race of men, the buffoons, there have been some who would not leave their fooling at the very moment of death. One that the hang man was turning off the ladder cried: “Launch the galley,” an ordinary saying of his.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2992

but even over our inclinations, our thoughts and wills, which they govern, incite and agitate at the mercy of their influences, as our reason teaches us;

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2995

if our virtue, our vices, our knowledge, and this very discourse we are upon of the power of the stars, and the comparison we are making betwixt them and us, proceed, as our reason supposes, from their favour;

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4440

This last effort totally overwhelmed the little life he had left; they again laid him upon his bed; but coming to himself, and starting as it were out of his swoon, all other faculties failing, to give his people notice that they were to conceal his death the most necessary command he had then to give, that his soldiers might not be discouraged (with the news) he expired with his finger upon his mouth, the ordinary sign of keeping silence. Who ever lived so long and so far into death?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 673

“If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it, to what end would you desire longer to keep it?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5759

But have I not reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, ‘tis excusable to warm and support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2517

This one thing of being always shut up in a chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and sad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I much more pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, and that the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence and reality of the thing.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2149

And yet even the Greeks themselves very much admired and highly applauded the order and disposition that Paulus AEmilius observed in the feast he gave them at his return from Macedon. But I do not here speak of effects, I speak of words only.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4063

“If thou knowest,” says Carneades, “of a serpent lurking in a place where, without suspicion, a person is going to sit down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if thou dost not give him caution of his danger; and so much the more because the action is to be known by none but thyself.” If we do not take up of ourselves the rule of well-doing, if impunity pass with us for justice, to how many sorts of wickedness shall we every day abandon ourselves?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6251

[“‘Tis the part of a wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the impetus of friendship, as upon that of his horse.” --Cicero, De Amicit., c. 17.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4494

The Romans exempted from war all such as were maimed in the thumbs, as having no more sufficient strength to hold their weapons.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3011

In one kind of barking of a dog the horse knows there is anger, of another sort of bark he is not afraid. Even in the very beasts that have no voice at all, we easily conclude, from the society of offices we observe amongst them, some other sort of communication: their very motions discover it:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6542

for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others commonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that the ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that they are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5000

[“Alcon yesterday touched Jove’s statue; he, although marble, suffers the force of the physician: to-day ordered to be transferred from the old temple, where it stood, it is carried out, although it be a god and a stone.”--Ausonius, Ep., 74.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6117

and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff can do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils the meadows:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2485

as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it there loses its sting and its use for ever,

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1976

more, I think, than who will confess they are not. Was it not a pleasant passage of a friend of mine? There were, several gentlemen assembled together about the dispute of one seigneur with another; which other had, in truth, some preeminence of titles and alliances above the ordinary gentry.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4638

Does either my face, my colour, or my voice give any manifestation of my being moved? I do not think my eyes look fierce, that my countenance appears troubled, or that my voice is dreadful: am I red, do I foam, does any word escape my lips I ought to repent? Do I start? Do I tremble with fury? For those, I tell thee, are the true signs of anger.” And so, turning to the fellow that was whipping him, “Ply on thy work,” said he, “whilst this gentleman and I dispute.” This is his story.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 535

Notwithstanding, in case of such a manifest ignorance or cowardice as exceeds all ordinary example, ‘tis but reason to take it for a sufficient proof of treachery and malice, and for such to be punished.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5637

The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very different from the common and natural, way. My page makes love, and understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus, Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]-- and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he understands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use of the schools. Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much naturalise art as they artificialise nature. Let us let Bembo and Equicola alone.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4831

Now I, who know that her life is involved in mine, begin to make much of myself, that I may preserve her. And I lose the privilege my age has given me, of being more constant and resolute in many things, when I call to mind that in this old fellow there is a young girl who is interested in his health.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 809

Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men; and in another place they are in common without offence; in one place particularly, the women take it for a mark of honour to have as many gay fringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have lain with several men. Moreover, has not custom made a republic of women separately by themselves? has it not put arms into their hands, and made them raise armies and fight battles?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3614

they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability of reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents; the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former knowledge,--

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4967

No Roman till Pliny’s time had ever vouchsafed to practise physic; that office was only performed by Greeks and foreigners, as ‘tis now amongst us French, by those who sputter Latin; for, as a very great physician says, we do not easily accept the medicine we understand, no more than we do the drugs we ourselves gather.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2929

And I do not believe that means purely human are in any sort capable of doing it: for, if they were, so many rare and excellent souls, and so abundantly furnished with natural force, in former ages, could not have failed, by their reason, to arrive at this knowledge.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4465

It was not enough for them to fight and to die bravely, but cheerfully too; insomuch that they were hissed and cursed if they made any hesitation about receiving their death. The very girls themselves set them on:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 33

Those thoughts became a book, and the first part of that book, which was to confer immortality on the writer, appeared at Bordeaux in 1580. Montaigne was then fifty-seven; he had suffered for some years past from renal colic and gravel; and it was with the necessity of distraction from his pain, and the hope of deriving relief from the waters, that he undertook at this time a great journey.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4621

“Rabie jecur incendente, feruntur, Praecipites; ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit,”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 162

After the conclusion of Mass, he took the sacrament; when the priest was about to depart, he said to him: “Spiritual father, I implore you humbly, as well as those over whom you are set, to pray to the Almighty on my behalf; that, if it be decreed in heaven that I am now to end my life, He will take compassion on my soul, and pardon me my sins, which are manifold, it not being possible for so weak and poor a creature as I to obey completely the will of such a Master; or, if He think fit to keep me longer here, that it may please Him to release my present extreme anguish, and to direct my footsteps in the right path, that I may become a better man than I have been.” He paused to recover breath a little; priest was about to go away, he called him back and proceeded: “I desire to say, besides, in your hearing this: I declare that I was christened and I have lived, and that so I wish to die, in the faith which Moses preached in Egypt; which afterwards the Patriarchs accepted and professed in Judaea; and which, in the course of time, has been transmitted to France and to us.” He seemed desirous of adding something more, but he ended with a request to his uncle and me to send up prayers for him; “for those are,” he said, “the best duties that Christians can fulfil one for another.” In the course of talking, his shoulder was uncovered, and although a man-servant stood near him, he asked his uncle to re-adjust the clothes.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1859

The Thracian ambassadors coming to comfort Archileonida, the mother of Brasidas, upon the death of her son, and commending him to that height as to say he had not left his like behind him, she rejected this private and particular commendation to attribute it to the public: “Tell me not that,” said she; “I know the city of Sparta has many citizens both greater and of greater worth than he.” In the battle of Crecy, the Prince of Wales, being then very young, had the vanguard committed to him: the main stress of the battle happened to be in that place, which made the lords who were with him, finding themselves overmatched, send to King Edward to advance to their relief.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5009

This man first of all began to teach them the names of fevers, colds, and imposthumes; the seat of the heart, liver, and intestines, a science till then utterly unknown to them; and instead of garlic, with which they were wont to cure all manner of diseases, how painful or extreme soever, he taught them, though it were but for a cough or any little cold, to take strange mixtures, and began to make a trade not only of their health, but of their lives.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4350

I do not here form a statue to erect in the great square of a city, in a church, or any public place:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7179

Pain, pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1356

I have only led a languishing life; and the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of administering anything of consolation, double my affliction for his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree, that methinks, by outliving him, I defraud him of his part.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5617

What better interpretation can we make of Messalina’s behaviour? She, at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use; but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her husband’s stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5415

I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1593

[“Is Venus really so alarming to the new-made bride, or does she honestly oppose her parent’s rejoicing the tears she so abundantly sheds on entering the nuptial chamber? No, by the Gods, these are no true tears.”--Catullus, lxvi. 15.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1373

[“Let the wise man bear the name of a madman, the just one of an unjust, if he seek wisdom more than is sufficient.” --Horace, Ep., i. 6, 15.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7156

When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I do not say that he relaxed his mind: I say that he strengthened it, by vigour of courage subjecting those violent employments and laborious thoughts to the ordinary usage of life: wise, had he believed the last was his ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation. We are great fools. “He has passed his life in idleness,” say we: “I have done nothing to-day.” What?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6824

Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of their conservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous of being worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidents subject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, they cannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such a thing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfully undergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when they die, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given many examples.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1106

So many great names, so many famous victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6812

The things that I know to be evil, as to injure one’s neighbour and to disobey one’s superior, whether it be God or man, I carefully avoid; such as I do not know whether they be good or evil, I cannot fear them. If I am to die and leave you alive, the gods alone only know whether it will go better with you or with me. Wherefore, as to what concerns me, you may do as you shall think fit.

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7106

If I had any sons, I should willingly wish them my fortune. The good father that God gave me (who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment of his goodness, but truly ‘tis a very hearty one) sent me from my cradle to be brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all the while I was at nurse, and still longer, bringing me up to the meanest and most common way of living:

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1992

“Ad haec se Romanus Graiusque, et Barbaras induperator Erexit; caucus discriminis atque laboris Inde habuit: tanto major famae sitis est, quam Virtutis.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 315

“Misero quod omneis Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi, Quod loquar amens. Lingua sed torpet: tenuis sub artus Flamma dimanat; sonitu suopte Tintinant aures; gemina teguntur Lumina nocte.”

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5959

[“Neither can a man dispute, but he must contradict.” (Or:) “Nor can people dispute without reprehension.” --Cicero, De Finib., i. 8.]

Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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