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Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 31

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Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed; when alone or in company; morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy, that Former of good judgement and character who is

Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed; when alone or in company; morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy, that Former of good judgement and character who is privileged to be concerned with everything.

Michel de Montaigne
Morning, Philosophy, Educational
Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.

Michel de Montaigne
Educational, Ideas, Words Of Wisdom

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

Michel de Montaigne
Animal, Men, Action
Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.222

Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

Michel de Montaigne
Stealing, Plagiarism, Glad
Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Orlando Williams Wight (1866). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising his essays, journey into Italy, and letters”, p.389

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

Michel de Montaigne
Ignorance, Men, All Things
Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1044, Delphi Classics

For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Air, Draws
Michel de Montaigne, Bayle St. John (1866). “Essays [tr. by Cotton”, p.369

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

Michel de Montaigne
Kings, Ignorance, Passion
Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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.

Michel de Montaigne
Inspirational, Communication, Grieving
Michel de Montaigne, Antoine JAY (1842). “The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne; Comprising; the Essays, Translated by Cotton; the Letters; the Journey Into Germany and Italy, Now First Translated; a Life by the Editor; Notes: ... Critical Opinions; ... the Éloges of MM. Jay and Villemain; a”, p.457

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.

Michel de Montaigne
Extremes, Nations, Customs
Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.271

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Teach, Dies
Essais bk. 1, ch. 20 (1580) See Porteus 2

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

Michel de Montaigne
Education, Book, Giving
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.297, Stanford University Press

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

Michel de Montaigne
Educational, Mind, Lessons
Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.

Michel de Montaigne
Education, World, Speech
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.392, Stanford University Press

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Law, Society
Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Essays:”, p.17, Sheba Blake Publishing

There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.

Michel de Montaigne
Names, Sound, Substance
Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Unhappy, Frail

A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Discipline, Vigor
Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.865

In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.

Michel de Montaigne
Happiness, Lying, Opinion

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

Michel de Montaigne
Art, Children, Educational

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

Michel de Montaigne
Lying, Men, Color

It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

Michel de Montaigne
Death, Years, Alive

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.

Michel de Montaigne
Death, Liberty, Premeditation
Michel de Montaigne, George Savile Marquis of Halifax (1743). “Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator”, p.82

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

Michel de Montaigne
World, Ridiculous, Miserable
Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.231

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.

Michel de Montaigne
Home, Desert, Degradation
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.42, Stanford University Press

Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

Michel de Montaigne
Knowledge, Drug, Decay
Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.339, Delphi Classics

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