Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592)
Influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the inventor of the personal essay.
How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.
I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.
Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination. ..And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.
Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.
I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.
Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout, a la française.
In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.