Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

Ce serait peut-être de l'impiété chez Saint Augustin (par exemple), si d'un côté on lui proposait d'enterrer ses écrits, dont notre religion reçoit un si grand fruit, ou d'enterrer ses enfants au cas où il en eut, s'il n'aimait pas mieux enterrer ses enfants.

If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.

Mi estatura está algo por bajo de la media: este defecto no es solamente feo, sino incómodo, principalmente para los que tienen mando o ejercen cargos, pues la autoridad que procura la presencia hermosa y la corporal majestad les faltan.

But between ourselves, let me say that there are two things I have always observed to go hand in hand: super-celestial opinions and sub-terrestrial morals.

Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot and he creates Gods by the dozen.

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

let us learn to withstand it resolutely, and to fight it. And to start to rid it of its greatest advantage over us, let us take a completely different route from the usual one. Let us rid it of its strangeness, get to know it, become accustomed to it. Let us have nothing so often in our minds as death. Let us picture it in our imagination constantly, in all its aspects.

Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together and make us human.

Ik heb gemerkt dat wij in de leerschool van de menselijke samenleving vaak de volgende fout maken: wij zijn er meer op uit onze eigen persoon op de voorgrond te stellen dan om anderen te doorgronden, en wij getroosten ons meer moeite om onze koopwaar aan de man te brengen dan om nieuwe voorraad in te slaan. Je kunt wijs zijn zonder ophef te maken, zonder aanstoot te geven.

Each man contains the entire pattern of the human condition.

Let us never allow ourselves to be carried away so completely by pleasure that we fail to recall from time to time in how many ways our happiness is prey to death and threatened by its grip.

Il est peu d'hommes, qui aiment la poésie, qui ne se gratifieraient plus d'être le père de l'Éneide que du plus beau garçon de Rome, et qui ne souffriraient pas plus aisément la perte de celui-ci que de l'Éneide.

Every one of us is a hodge-podge, so shapeless and diverse in structure that each piece, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others. I

It is an absolute perfection, a perfection like that of the gods, to be able faithfully to enjoy one's own nature. We search for other conditions because we do not understand how to deal with the condition we actually have, and we go outside ourselves because we do not know what is within us. So there is really no point getting up on stilts, for even on stilts we still have to walk on our own legs. And on the most exalted throne in the world, we still have to sit upon our own bottom.

It is not certain where Death awaits us, so let us await it everywhere. To think of death beforehand is to think of our liberty. Whoever learns how to die has learned how not to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint.xi

We cannot be held to promises beyond our power or our means. That is why - since nothing is really in our power but our will - it is on the will that all the rules and duties of Man are based and established.

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.

jamás la filosofía me parece tan razonable como cuando combate y reconoce nuestra presunción y vanidad, cuando de buena fe confiesa la irresolución, debilidad e ignorancia humanas.

Wonder is the foundation of all... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

Es una perfección absoluta, y como divina «la de saber disfrutar lealmente de su ser». Buscamos otras condiciones por no comprender el empleo de las nuestras, y salimos fuera de nosotros, por ignorar lo que pasa dentro. Inútil

Yes. But he brought this great matter to a successful conclusion.' – That means something, but not enough; for we rightly accept the maxim which says that plans must not be judged by results.

Nous ne sommes jamais chez nous, nous sommes toujours au-delà.

If you did not have death, you would curse me incessantly for depriving you of it. Realizing its advantages, I have deliberately mixed a little bitterness into it to prevent you from embracing it too greedily and imprudently. To place you in the state of moderation I ask of you, of neither running from life nor fleeing from death, I have modulated them both between sweet and bitter.

El que puede decir cómo es su ardor, arde con un fuego pequeño.