Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 34

• The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither the greatest captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use or science of eating well.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Food, Cooking

  "Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne".

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• Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, People, Appearance

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• Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, World, Rules Of Life

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• Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

  Michel de Montaigne

  World, Ridiculous, Miserable

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.231

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• Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Men, Color

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• While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Passion, Different, Firsts

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.540, Stanford University Press

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• Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Knowledge, Drug, Decay

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.339, Delphi Classics

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• Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Hands, Views

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Self, Hands

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

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• Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Revenge

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• Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Love, Sports, Nurse

  Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, 1595.

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• The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Running, School, World

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.952, 谷月社

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• I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Judgment, Determine

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• It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Suicide, Suicidal, Virtue

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• And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Farewell, Leisure

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• If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Truth, Self, Talking

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• Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Trust, Truth, Taken

  Michel de Montaigne (1603). “Essayes”

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• I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Life, Philosophy, Humble

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.611, Stanford University Press

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• I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Years, People, Age

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• The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Judgement, Lightning, Doe

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.171, Stanford University Press

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• Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Fickle, Uniforms

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

  Michel de Montaigne

  Knows

  'Essais' (1580) bk. 2, ch. 12 (on discussing the position of the sceptic)

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• I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fashion, Mind

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.622, Stanford University Press

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• Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Children, Educational

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• It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Soul, Doe, Weight

  Michel de Montaigne, John Michael Cohen (1959). “Essays”, Penguin Classics

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