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Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

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
Proof
Contemplative
Argument
Surest
Serious
Stubborn
Anything
Ass
Grave
Disdainful
Graves
Obstinacy
Folly
Proofs
Heat
Obstinate

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Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered as I would have done when he said, Somebody else's.
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Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.
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No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don't bother your head about it.
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Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
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And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.
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Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
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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?
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Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.
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Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.
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Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.
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Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
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Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.
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The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
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Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.
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Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
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As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me but I meane not they should cover or hide me.
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My trade and art is to live.
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I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
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