Quote

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.

Michel de Montaigne

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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Like
Fierce
Invented
Manage
Disordered
Medicine
Wield
Sick
Eloquence
Democracy
Engine
State
Engines
States
Employed

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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.
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It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
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It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.
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The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
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Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
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For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
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Satiety comes of too frequent repetition and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking
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Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
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Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
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Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad.
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Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
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Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
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To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.
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Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.
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No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
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We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
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I am myself the matter of my book.
Michel de Montaigne
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We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.
Michel de Montaigne