> INSPIRING AND CHALLENGING QUOTES

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Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he so finds himself; not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in this alone belief gives itself being and reality.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »All external accessions receive taste and colour from the internal constitution, as clothes warm us, not with their heat, but our own, which they are fit to cover and nourish; he who would shield therewith a cold body, would do the same service for the cold, for so snow and ice are preserved. And, certes, after the same manner that study is a torment to an idle man, abstinence from wine to a drunkard, frugality to the spendthrift, and exercise to a lazy, tender-bred fellow, so it is of all the rest. The things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.«

ESSAYS I, 1580-88
(Translated by Charles Cotton)

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »The world is nothing but variety and disemblance ...«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Plato himself is throughout poetical; and the old theology, as the learned tell us, is all poetry ...«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »I do not hate opinions contrary to my own: I am so, far from being angry to see a discrepancy betwixt mine and other men's judgments, and from rendering myself unfit for the society of men, from being of another sense and party than mine, that on the contrary (the most general way that nature has followed being variety, and more in souls than bodies, forasmuch as they are of a more subtle substance, and more susceptible of forms) I find it much more rare to see our humours and designs jump and agree. And there never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains: their most universal quality is diversity.«

ESSAYS II, 1580-88
(Translated by Charles Cotton)

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the laws themselves than my own word. I am nice, even to superstition, in keeping my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to make them uncertain and conditional. To those of no great moment, I add the jealousy of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses me with its own interest. Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I once say a thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that delivering it to the knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it my own performance.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Not because Socrates has said so, but because it is in truth my own humour, and peradventure not without some excess, I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Polander as a Frenchman, preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties whatever. I am not much taken with the sweetness of a native air: acquaintance wholly new and wholly my own appear to me full as good as the other common and fortuitous ones with Four neighbours: friendships that are purely of our own acquiring ordinarily carry it above those to which the communication of climate or of blood oblige us.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »For my part, what I should not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one ...«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. 'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had one. What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man, being of so wild a composition? Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who has never lain with a lame mistress'.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experience has no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of events is unsure, by reason they are always unlike. There is no quality so universal in this image of things as diversity and variety.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Resemblance does not so much make one as difference makes another. Nature has obliged herself to make nothing other that was not unlike.«

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: »Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours.«

ESSAYS III, 1580-88
(Translated by Charles Cotton)