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 66 of 145
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Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1821
I, in those days, more jocundly and freely referred the conduct of my affairs to the stars, than I have since done to my own providence and judgment. Most good managers look upon it as a horrible thing to live always thus in uncertainty, and do not consider, in the first place, that the greatest part of the world live so: how many worthy men have wholly abandoned their own certainties, and yet daily do it, to the winds, to trust to the inconstant favour of princes and of fortune?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1474
The estimate and value of a man consist in the heart and in the will: there his true honour lies. Valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of the courage and the soul; it does not lie in the goodness of our horse or our arms but in our own. He that falls obstinate in his courage--
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6010
This is the reason that we see so many silly souls amongst the learned, and more than those of the better sort: they would have made good husbandmen, good merchants, and good artisans: their natural vigour was cut out to that proportion.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3001
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1062
I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 466
[“We think some sorts of birds are purposely created to serve the purposes of augury.”--Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 64.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6776
Apprehension, which is particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and more remote departure; ‘tis a kind of death that I do not think of the worst sort; ‘tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a crowd. But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could not be saved:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4947
or “somebody had set open the casement,” or “he had lain upon his left side,” or “he had some disagreeable fancies in his head”: in sum, a word, a dream, or a look, seems to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate their own errors: or, if they so please, they even make use of our growing worse, and do their business in this way which can never fail them: which is by buzzing us in the ear, when the disease is more inflamed by their medicaments, that it had been much worse but for those remedies; he, whom from an ordinary cold they have thrown into a double tertian-ague, had but for them been in a continued fever.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 986
[Seneca, Ep., 95. “Since the ‘savans’ have made their appearance among us, the good people have become eclipsed.” --Rousseau, Discours sur les Lettres.]
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4353
What contentment would it not be to me to hear any one thus relate to me the manners, faces, countenances, the ordinary words and fortunes of my ancestors? how attentively should I listen to it! In earnest, it would be evil nature to despise so much as the pictures of our friends and predecessors, the fashion of their clothes and arms. I preserve their writing, seal, and a particular sword they wore, and have not thrown the long staves my father used to carry in his hand, out of my closet.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6806
I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature teaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does it with a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double weight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore, it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the easiest and the most happy:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3910
They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2828
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not enough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the power of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3286
Such as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards in our fathers’ days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly those nations live, without magistrate and without law, than ours do, where there are more officers and lawyers than there are of other sorts of men and business:--
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5704
I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For, as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said “the vice is in not coming out, not in going in,” let her who has no care of her conscience have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within, let her carry a fair outside at least.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6234
I said elsewhere, that being planted in the very centre of this new religion, I am not only deprived of any great familiarity with men of other kind of manners than my own, and of other opinions, by which they hold together, as by a tie that supersedes all other obligations; but moreover I do not live without danger, amongst men to whom all things are equally lawful, and of whom the most part cannot offend the laws more than they have already done; from which the extremist degree of licence proceeds.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5863
Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than nothing in comparison of what is unknown.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 46
On quitting Venice, he went in succession to Ferrara, Rovigo, Padua, Bologna (where he had a stomach-ache), Florence, &c.; and everywhere, before alighting, he made it a rule to send some of his servants to ascertain where the best accommodation was to be had. He pronounced the Florentine women the finest in the world, but had not an equally good opinion of the food, which was less plentiful than in Germany, and not so well served.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5360
Subrius Flavius, being by Nero’s command to be put to death, and by the hand of Niger, both of them great captains, when they lead him to the place appointed for his execution, seeing the grave that Niger had caused to be hollowed to put him into ill-made: “Neither is this,” said he, turning to the soldiers who guarded him, “according to military discipline.” And to Niger, who exhorted him to keep his head firm: “Do but thou strike as firmly,” said he. And he very well foresaw what would follow when he said so; for Niger’s arm so trembled that he had several blows at his head before he could cut it off. This man seems to have had his thoughts rightly fixed upon the subject.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1499
In a nation of the Indies, there is this commendable custom, that when anything befalls them amiss in any encounter or battle, they publicly ask pardon of the sun, who is their god, as having committed an unjust action, always imputing their good or evil fortune to the divine justice, and to that submitting their own judgment and reason.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3005
Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communication with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself, he knew the true qualities and differences of them all, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do. Need we a better proof to condemn human impudence in the concern of beasts?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 666
Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more. Aristotle tells us that there are certain little beasts upon the banks of the river Hypanis, that never live above a day: they which die at eight of the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those that die at five in the evening, in their decrepitude: which of us would not laugh to see this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal or woe?
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2745
My design is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I will cudgel my brains about; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1949
The Emperor Otho, having put on a resolution to kill himself that night, after having settled his domestic affairs, divided his money amongst his servants, and set a good edge upon a sword he had made choice of for the purpose, and now staying only to be satisfied whether all his friends had retired in safety, he fell into so sound a sleep that the gentlemen of his chamber heard him snore.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1519
“Conjugis ante coacta novi dimittere collum, Quam veniens una atque altera rursus hyems Noctibus in longis avidum saturasset amorem,”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 1533
My late father, a man that had no other advantages than experience and his own natural parts, was nevertheless of a very clear judgment, formerly told me that he once had thoughts of endeavouring to introduce this practice; that there might be in every city a certain place assigned to which such as stood in need of anything might repair, and have their business entered by an officer appointed for that purpose.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 780
“Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive: in montibus uri se patiuntur: pugiles, caestibus contusi, ne ingemiscunt quidem.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2300
One gallant action, therefore, ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would be always so, and upon all occasions.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3177
As to magnanimity, it will be hard to exhibit a better instance of it than in the example of the great dog sent to Alexander the Great from the Indies. They first brought him a stag to encounter, next a boar, and after that a bear, all which he slighted, and disdained to stir from his place; but when he saw a lion he then immediately roused himself, evidently manifesting that he declared that alone worthy to enter the lists with him.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2415
When Therykion tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the battle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic and Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; “that,” said he, “is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining”: telling him, “that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of honour and virtue.” Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in the right, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the same, but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4855
The other is Alexander the Great. For whoever will consider the age at which he began his enterprises, the small means by which he effected so glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the greatest and most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was followed, the extraordinary favour wherewith fortune embraced and favoured so many hazardous, not to say rash, exploits,
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4792
After having drawn the siege to a great length, by which Octavius was grown more negligent and less attentive to his enterprise, they made choice of one day about noon, and having first placed the women and children upon the walls to make a show, sallied upon the besiegers with such fury, that having routed the first, second, and third body, and afterwards the fourth, and the rest, and beaten them all out of their trenches, they pursued them even to their ships, and Octavius himself was fain to fly to Dyrrachium, where Pompey lay.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6741
The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato, is where that which is unjust should be reputed for just.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 7215
APOLOGY: [In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very few quotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne’s text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595] he had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his “idleness.”--Le Clerc. They grow, however, more sparing in the Third Book.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4239
and never was time or place wherein princes might propose to themselves more assured or greater rewards for virtue and justice. The first who shall make it his business to get himself into favour and esteem by those ways, I am much deceived if he do not and by the best title outstrip his competitors: force and violence can do something, but not always all.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 243
I have recovered none of it, and most of my papers and cash--[The French word is hardes, which St. John renders things. But compare Chambers’s “Domestic Annals of Scotland,” 2d ed. i. 48.]--remain in their possession. I have not seen the Prince. Fifty were lost . . . as for the Count of Thorigny, he lost some ver plate and a few articles of clothing.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 312
thereby to express that melancholic, dumb, and deaf stupefaction, which benumbs all our faculties, when oppressed with accidents greater than we are able to bear. And, indeed, the violence and impression of an excessive grief must of necessity astonish the soul, and wholly deprive her of her ordinary functions: as it happens to every one of us, who, upon any sudden alarm of very ill news, find ourselves surprised, stupefied, and in a manner deprived of all power of motion, so that the soul, beginning to vent itself in tears and lamentations, seems to free and disengage itself from the sudden oppression, and to have obtained some room to work itself out at greater liberty.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4495
Augustus confiscated the estate of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the armies; and, before him, the Senate, in the time of the Italic war, had condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all his goods, for having purposely cut off the thumb of his left hand, to exempt himself from that expedition.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2764
The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselves sufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, they need not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance; as they have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount on horseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 4371
Our intelligence being by no other way communicable to one another but by a particular word, he who falsifies that betrays public society. ‘Tis the only way by which we communicate our thoughts and wills; ‘tis the interpreter of the soul, and if it deceive us, we no longer know nor have further tie upon one another; if that deceive us, it breaks all our correspondence, and dissolves all the ties of government.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 179
Monseigneur, I pray God to grant you a very long and happy life. From Paris, this 18th of June 1568. Your most humble and most obedient son,
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 687
“‘Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est, Quae non audierit mistos vagitibus aegris Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri.’
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5703
Our fathers dressed up their daughters’ looks in bashfulness and fear (their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands they have first killed another in battle. For me, who have no other title left me to these things but by the ears, ‘tis sufficient if, according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their counsel.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3778
If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, _Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt._ “Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me,” he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5299
I understand my men even by their silence and smiles; and better discover them, perhaps, at table than in the council.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 5106
I will not deprive deceit of its due; that were but ill to understand the world: I know it has often been of great use, and that it maintains and supplies most men’s employment. There are vices that are lawful, as there are many actions, either good or excusable, that are not lawful in themselves.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 3382
Not only deceiving and false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man has forged from his own invention: and of all the religions that St. Paul found in repute at Athens, that which they had dedicated “to the unknown God” seemed to him the most to be excused.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2652
I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both natural and acquired, proper to maintain dominion, than he; yet he is fallen from it like a child. For this reason it is that I have picked out him, amongst several others that I know of the same humour, for the greatest example. It were matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better thus or otherwise.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 6817
You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seem as if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do not believe that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not to believe them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purely committing my affair into their hands. I wholly rely upon them; and hold myself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for you and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear the gods.”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne, passage 2937
Louis was in the right, who, when the Tartar king, who was become Christian, designed to come to Lyons to kiss the Pope’s feet, and there to be an eye-witness of the sanctity he hoped to find in our manner, immediately diverted him from his purpose; for fear lest our disorderly way of living should, on the contrary, put him out of conceit with so holy a belief!