Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592)
Influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the inventor of the personal essay.
The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.
Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette ? l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
Mon métier et mon art, c'est vivre.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
Si, avons nous beau monter sur des échasses, car sur des échasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus élevé trône du monde, si ne sommes assis que sur notre cul.
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir ?tre ? soi.
The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet— the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!