The Complete Essays Quotes

“A falta de educação, a ignorância, a simplicidade de espírito, a franqueza aliam-se em geral à ingenuidade. A curiosidade, a sutileza, o saber acarretam a malícia. A humildade, o temor, a obediência, a bondade elevada até a fraqueza e que constitui o alicerce sobre o qual assenta a conservação da sociedade humana, são peculiares a uma alma vazia, dócil, e presumindo pouco de si.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“Why do you judge a man when he is all wrapped up like a parcel? He is letting us see only such attributes as do not belong to him while hiding the only ones which enable us to judge his real worth.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Rhetoric flourished in Rome when their affairs were in their worst state and when they were shattered by the storms of civil war, just as a field left untamed bears the most flourishing weeds.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Tabiatta şöyle bir karışma da görülür: Ressamlardan öğreniyoruz ki ağlarken ve gülerken yüzümüzde beliren çizgiler ve hareketler aynıymış. Gerçekten, resim henüz bitmeden bakacak olursanız çehre ağlayacak mı, gülecek mi bilemezsiniz. Daha garibi var: Gülme son haddine varınca gözyaşlarıyla karışır.”
― Montaigne, Denemeler

“And a saint put it a saintly way: [The arranging of funerals, the choosing of tombs and the pomp of obsequies are consolations for the living rather than supports for the dead.] That is why Socrates (when Crito asked him in his final moments how he wanted to be buried) replied, ‘Just as you wish.’
If I had to trouble myself further, I would find it more worthy to imitate those who set about enjoying the disposition and honour of their tombs while they are still alive and breathing, and who take pleasure in seeing their dead faces carved in marble. Happy are they who can please and delight their senses with things insensate – and who can live off their death.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete

“Our main enemies are held to be death, poverty and pain. Yet everyone knows that death, called the dreadest of all dreadful things, is by others called the only haven from life’s torments, our natural sovereign good, the only guarantor of our freedom, the common and ready cure of all our ills;2 some await it trembling and afraid: others [C] bear it more easily than life.3 [B] One man complains that death is too available:4”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together and make us human.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I am not at all sure whether I would not much rather have given birth to one perfectly formed son by commerce with the Muses than by commerce with my wife.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Que sçay-je?”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“have mixed a little bitterness with it, to the end, that seeing of what convenience it is, you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“Jeg har i øvrigt besluttet mig til at turde sige alt, hvad jeg har mod til at gøre i handling, ja, selv tanker, som ikke må komme frem, må jeg misbillige. Den sletteste handling og karakteregenskab hos mig forekommer mig slet ikke at være nær så styg som den lumpenhed, det er ikke at turde kendes ved den.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essais

“does know himself never considers external things to be his;”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Epicurus frees his Wise Man from anticipation and worry about the future.4 [B] The most solid of our laws concerning”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“for as I know only too well from experience when we lose those we love there is no consolation sweeter than the knowledge of having remembered to tell them everything and to have enjoyed the most perfect and absolute communication with them.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“The natural, original distemper of Man is presumption.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Why remember we not, what, and how many contradictions we find and feel even in our own judgment? How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which to-day we deem but fables? Glory and curiosity are the scourges of our souls. The latter induceth us to have an oar in every ship, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved or undecided.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“That is a subtle observation on the part of philosophy: you can both love virtue too much and [B] behave with excess [A] in an action which itself is just. The [B] Voice [A] of God adapts itself fittingly to that bias: ‘Be not more wise than it behoveth, but be ye soberly wise.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne

“Bazıları der ki iyinin aşırısı olmaz çünkü aşırı oldu mu zaten iyi değil demektir. İnsanın gözü karanlıkta da iyi görmez fazla ışıkta da.”
― Montaigne, Essais

“Wij zijn alle koningen zonder onderscheid onderdanigheid en gehoorzaamheid verontschuldigd, want die betreffen hun functie; maar achting en zeker liefde zijn we alleen hun deugden verschuldigd. Laten we hen, als concessie aan de openbare orde, geduldig verdragen wanneer ze hun ambt onwaardig zijn, over hun fouten zwijgen, en hen helpen door bijval te schenken aan hun neutrale politieke handelen zolang hun gezag onze steun behoeft. Maar wanneer de relatie beëindigd is zou het niet redelijk zijn de Gerechtigheid en onze vrijheid het uiten van onze ware gevoelens te ontzeggen en met name de goede onderdanen de eer te onthouden dat zij eerbiedig en trouw een meester hebben gediend wiens onvolkomenheden hun zo goed bekend waren, en daarbij het nageslacht dit zo nuttige voorbeeld te onthouden. En zij die omwille van een of andere persoonlijke verplichting tegen beter weten in de herinnering aan een laakbare vorst koesteren, hanteren een eigen, particuliere gerechtigheid ten koste van die van de gemeenschap.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“I have my own laws and my own court to judge me, and I refer to these rather than elsewhere.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“Les hommes, quelque beau visage que fortune leur fasse, ne se peuvent appeler heureux jusqu'à ce qu'on leur ai vu passer le dernier jour de leur vie, à cause de l'incertitude et de la variabilité des choses humaines qui d'un bien léger mouvement se changent d'un état en un autre tout divers”
― Montaigne, Essais

“Pas de doute, avec ce jour, j'ai vécu un de plus que je n'aurais dû”
― Montaigne, Essais

“I have seen elsewhere houses in ruins, and statues both of gods and men: these are men still. 'Tis all true; and yet, for all that, I cannot so often revisit the tomb of that so great and so puissant city,—[Rome]— that I do not admire and reverence it. The care of the dead is recommended to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these dead; I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of those of my own house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre, and the Tiber before I knew the Seine.....
.... Finding myself of no use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither love it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me; and therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and houses, and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not interested in them. Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by persons whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort more than to hear a recital of their—acts or to read their writings? It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments: I pronounce those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears: Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the common parts: I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and sup. It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.
And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“That at Rome one saw nothing but the sky under which she had been built, and the outline of her site: that the knowledge we had of her was abstract, contemplative, not palpable to the actual senses: that those who said they beheld at least the ruins of Rome, went too far, for the ruins of so gigantic a structure must have commanded greater reverence-it was nothing but her sepulchre. The world, jealous of her, prolonged empire, had in the first place broken to pieces that admirable body, and then, when they perceived that the remains attracted worship and awe, had buried the very wreck itself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essais de Montaigne

“La persecución y la caza corren propiamente de nuestra cuenta; no tenemos excusa si las efectuamos mal y fuera de propósito. Fallar en la captura es otra cosa. Porque hemos nacido para buscar la verdad; poseerla corresponde a una potencia mayor. [...] El mundo es sólo una escuela de indagación. Lo importante no es quien llegará a la meta, sino quién efectuará las más bellas carreras.”
― Montaigne, Essais

“A man but ill proves the honour and beauty of an action by its utility: and very erroneously concludes that every one is obliged to it, and that it becomes every one to do it, if it be of utility: "All things are not equally fit for all men" (Propertius). Let us take that which is most necessary and profitable for human society; it will be marriage; and yet the council of the saints find the contrary much better, excluding from it the most venerable vocation of man: as we design those horses for stallions of which we have the least esteem.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne, Complete

“cada qual aprecia o odor de seu esterco": Nossos olhos não veem para trás. Cem vezes por dia zombanos de nós mesmos ao zombarmos de nossos vizinhos; os defeitos que detestamos em outrem são ainda mais visíveis em nós, e no entanto, os admiramos com maravilhosa imprudência sem perceber a contradição.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need and our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne