Quote

Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.

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
Changed
Carefully
Least
Seats
Feelings
Holds
Magisterial
Without
Bear
Corrupted
Even
Hatred
Seat
Trying
Bears
Lets
Way
Friendship
Judgement
Judgment
Tries

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
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The human face is a weak guarantee yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance.
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For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.
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No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.
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Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.
Michel de Montaigne
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The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is not without good reason, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.
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It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
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The continuous work of our life is to build death.
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We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
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It is no hard matter to get children but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.
Michel de Montaigne
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We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
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Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.
Michel de Montaigne
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Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
Michel de Montaigne
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All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.
Michel de Montaigne
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The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
Michel de Montaigne
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A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.
Michel de Montaigne
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Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
Michel de Montaigne