Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaignewas one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essaiscontains some of the most influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers all over the world, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche,...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 February 1533
CountryFrance
Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.
The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.
Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.
It's not victory if it doesn't end the war.
The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.