Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment"
54 Quotes
"Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment"
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under thesame roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?"
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)"
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their mostimportant affairs after being well warmed with wine."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
"He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, "I have lived."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
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