Quote

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.

Michel de Montaigne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Naked
Illusion
Reproduces
Poet
Virgil
Poetry
Panting
Alive
Amorous
Beautiful
Indefinable
Love
Venus
Mood

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Image
A man may be humble through vainglory.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
Michel de Montaigne
Image
When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity we are not so wretched as we are base
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The world always looks straights ahead as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward as for me, I roll about in myself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.
Michel de Montaigne