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 58 of 145
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Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6203
If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles not to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was never so sound, as when it was most sick.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2785
Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be published; ‘tis no great imperfection to make ill verses, but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of all comparison, and I believe it will never be equalled.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6950
That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile to judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I speak better and with better excuse. I happen very often more exactly to see and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves: I have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have given them warning of themselves.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6687
Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity itself and non-existency? Besides the flexibility of our invention to forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity amongst her graces.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2877
I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I have experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious a goddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3670
‘Tis all the reason in the world to limit human wit within the strictest limits imaginable; in study, as in all the rest, we ought to have its steps and advances numbered and fixed, and that the limits of its inquisition be bounded by art. It is curbed and fettered by religions, laws, customs, sciences, precepts, mortal and immortal penalties.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4342
Fortune rules in all things Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence Happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it to fortune Having too good an opinion of our own worth He should discern in himself, as well as in others He who is only a good man that men may know it How many worthy men have we known to survive their reputation Humble out of pride I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing Ill luck is good for something Imitating other men’s natures, thou layest aside thy own Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation Impunity pass with us for justice It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists Lessen the just value of things that I possess License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1431
Now, to return to my subject, I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by anything that I can gather, excepting, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live: there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3874
“and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we are to lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference and contradictions we there find, even to the inventing of lies and other flams, if it come to that, rather than accuse the senses.” Timagoras vowed that, by pressing or turning his eye, he could never perceive the light of the candle to double, and that the seeming so proceeded from the vice of opinion, and not from the instrument. The most absurd of all absurdities, with the Epicureans, is to deny the force and effect of the senses:--
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6938
If every one would pry into the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I have done into those which I am most subject to, he would see them coming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they do not always seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2577
And that which has always been found by ancient experience, and which we have heretofore observed among ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealous of such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of estimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2443
Nothing can be added to the beauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of Augustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented an important secret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his court, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4294
Our manners are infinitely corrupt, and wonderfully incline to the worse; of our laws and customs there are many that are barbarous and monstrous nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, if I could put something under to stop the wheel, and keep it where it is, I would do it with all my heart:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4558
‘Tis indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it mortifies in me several cares and desires wherewith my life has been disturbed; the care how the world goes, the care of riches, of grandeur, of knowledge, of health, of myself. There are men who are learning to speak at a time when they should learn to be silent for ever. A man may always study, but he must not always go to school what a contemptible thing is an old Abecedarian!--[Seneca, Ep. 36]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 292
Whereupon they, out of magnanimity of heart, presently contrived to carry out, upon their shoulders, their husbands and children, and the duke himself; a sight at which the emperor was so pleased, that, ravished with the generosity of the action, he wept for joy, and immediately extinguishing in his heart the mortal and capital hatred he had conceived against this duke, he from that time forward treated him and his with all humanity.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2269
[Which Cotton thus renders: “Birth though noble, ought not to share so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education.” Florio (1613) makes the passage read as-follows: “Methinks that, considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding idleness, and slow-learning prentisage.”]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6614
They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of trumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest means as ours. One said to Alexander: “Your father will leave you a great dominion, easy and pacific”; this youth was emulous of his father’s victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed the empire of the world in ease and peace.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 354
I was by no means pleased with a story, told me by a man of very great quality of a relation of mine, and one who had given a very good account of himself both in peace and war, that, coming to die in a very old age, of excessive pain of the stone, he spent the last hours of his life in an extraordinary solicitude about ordering the honour and ceremony of his funeral, pressing all the men of condition who came to see him to engage their word to attend him to his grave: importuning this very prince, who came to visit him at his last gasp, with a most earnest supplication that he would order his family to be there, and presenting before him several reasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a man of his condition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise, and appointed the method and order of his funeral parade.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4114
“Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa? Laudat posteritas! Nunc non e manibus illis, Nunc non a tumulo fortunataque favilla, Nascentur violae?”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4624
“Gratum est, quod patria; civem populoque dedisti, Si facis, ut patrix sit idoneus, utilis agris, Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6804
To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay, quite the contrary. Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3879
In case what the Epicureans say be true, viz: “that we have no knowledge if the senses’ appearances be false;” and if that also be true which the Stoics say, “that the appearances of the senses are so false that they can furnish us with no manner of knowledge,” we shall conclude, to the disadvantage of these two great dogmatical sects, that there is no science at all.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2268
Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is the danger. For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late. For the frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1111
[“Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we are ant to what purpose engendered.”--Persius, iii. 69]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4309
I produced them crude and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little troubled and imperfect; I have since established and fortified them with the authority of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom I have found of the same judgment: they have given me faster hold, and a more manifest fruition and possession of that I had before embraced.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 708
It is no wonder if this sort of accident frequently happen; for if imagination have any power in such things, it is so continually and vigorously bent upon this subject, that to the end it may not so often relapse into the same thought and violence of desire, it were better, once for all, to give these young wenches the things they long for.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1004
They used to go, it is said, to the other cities of Greece, to inquire out rhetoricians, painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon for legislators, magistrates, and generals of armies; at Athens they learned to speak well: here to do well; there to disengage themselves from a sophistical argument, and to unravel the imposture of captious syllogisms; here to evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, and with a noble courage and resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune and death; those cudgelled their brains about words, these made it their business to inquire into things; there was an eternal babble of the tongue, here a continual exercise of the soul.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2862
[“Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea.” --Horace, Od., ii. 117.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4518
The courtesy that you can, and certainly ought to shew to your enemy, when you have reduced him to an ill condition and have a great advantage over him, I do not see how you can do it, where the interest of another is concerned, where you are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of yours: he could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard of him he was there to serve. And he was therefore enlarged from the prisons of Italy at the speedy and solemn request of our king.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 937
Do you boast of your nobility, as being descended from seven rich successive ancestors? they look upon you with an eye of contempt, as men who have not a right idea of the universal image of nature, and that do not consider how many predecessors every one of us has had, rich, poor, kings, slaves, Greeks, and barbarians; and though you were the fiftieth descendant from Hercules, they look upon it as a great vanity, so highly to value this, which is only a gift of fortune.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6141
And wherever I have taken in hand to strengthen some old foundations of walls, and to repair some ruinous buildings, in earnest I have done it more out of respect to his design, than my own satisfaction; and am angry at myself that I have not proceeded further to finish the beginnings he left in his house, and so much the more because I am very likely to be the last possessor of my race, and to give the last hand to it.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3296
Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height, that, of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are with better title his, which we the least understand. To meet with an incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more a miracle; and if it were according to example, it would be no longer a singular thing.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1542
Now, all other creatures being sufficiently furnished with all things necessary for the support of their being--[Montaigne’s expression is, “with needle and thread.”--W.C.H.]--it is not to be imagined that we only are brought into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7088
[“‘Tis fine to die sword in hand.” (“And he remembers that it is honourable to die in arms.”)--AEneid, ii. 317.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2716
Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore armour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the main concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are few less whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being overburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock, or otherwise.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3163
I then drew out a great splinter he had got there, and, growing a little more familiar with him, squeezing the wound thrust out the matter, dirt, and gravel which was got into it, and wiped and cleansed it the best I could. He, finding himself something better, and much eased of his pain, laid him down to rest, and presently fell asleep with his foot in my hand.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6823
To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horror of it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining the succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universal republic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss or ruin?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4335
[She was adopted by him in 1588. See Leon Feugere’s Mademoiselle de Gournay: ‘Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages’.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2093
At the Baths, which the ancients made use of every day before they went to dinner, and as frequently as we wash our hands, they at first only bathed their arms and legs; but afterwards, and by a custom that has continued for many ages in most nations of the world, they bathed stark naked in mixed and perfumed water, looking upon it as a great simplicity to bathe in mere water. The most delicate and affected perfumed themselves all over three or four times a day. They often caused their hair to be pinched off, as the women of France have some time since taken up a custom to do their foreheads,
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7038
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things--of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should only affect some of these, what would he be able to do? he must know how to make use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the goods and evils which are consubstantial with our life; our being cannot subsist without this mixture, and the one part is no less necessary to it than the other. To attempt to combat natural necessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to kick with his mule.--[Plutarch, How to restrain Anger, c. 8.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6466
[“The more each man denies himself, the more the gods give him. Poor as I am, I seek the company of those who ask nothing; they who desire much will be deficient in much.” --Horace, Od., iii. 16,21,42.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6573
“Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est; ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 443
There are a thousand ways to miss the white, there is only one to hit it. For my own part, I have this vice in so great horror, that I am not sure I could prevail with my conscience to secure myself from the most manifest and extreme danger by an impudent and solemn lie. An ancient father says “that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3673
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly; and there is not a beast to whom a headboard is more justly to be given, to keep his looks down and before his feet, and to hinder him from wandering here and there out of the tracks which custom and the laws have laid before him. And therefore it will be better for you to keep yourself in the beaten path, let it be what it will, than to fly out at a venture with this unbridled liberty.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4360
and all that are frivolous should be reputed so. Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves. That I may habituate my fancy even to meditate in some method and to some end, and to keep it from losing itself and roving at random, ‘tis but to give to body and to record all the little thoughts that present themselves to it.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6859
He entertained me with this story: “That, about half a league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his, whom I also knew, and had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy had given him a very brisk chase, and that having been surprised in disorder, and his party being too weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge; and that he was in great trouble for his followers, whom (he said) he concluded to be all either dead or taken.” I innocently did my best to comfort, assure, and refresh him.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2874
Such as have sensuality to encounter, freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether “vicious and unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to that degree that a man’s reason can have no access,” and instance our own experience in the act of love,
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3388
La Lumière commune, L’oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux, Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux, Qui donnent vie à touts, nous maintiennent et gardent, Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent: Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les saisons, Selon qu’il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons; Qui remplit l’univers de ses vertus cognues; Qui d’un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les nues; L’esprit, l’ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant, En la course d’un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant; Plein d’immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et ferme; Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour terme: En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans séjour; Fils aisné de nature, et le père du jour:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4864
the excellence of his knowledge and capacity; the duration and grandeur of his glory, pure, clean, without spot or envy, and that long after his death it was a religious belief that his very medals brought good fortune to all who carried them about them; and that more kings and princes have written his actions than other historians have written the actions of any other king or prince whatever; and that to this very day the Mohammedans, who despise all other histories, admit of and honour his alone, by a special privilege: whoever, I say, will seriously consider these particulars, will confess that, all these things put together, I had reason to prefer him before Caesar himself, who alone could make me doubtful in my choice: and it cannot be denied that there was more of his own in his exploits, and more of fortune in those of Alexander.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 561
In the first pitched battle the Romans lost against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of ten thousand foot, that had taken fright, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, went and threw themselves headlong upon the great battalion of the enemies, which with marvellous force and fury they charged through and through, and routed with a very great slaughter of the Carthaginians, thus purchasing an ignominious flight at the same price they might have gained a glorious victory.--[Livy, xxi.