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I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.

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
Much
Arts
Contagion
World
Dear
Greatly
Civilization
Ruin
Afraid
Sold
Shall
Decline
Opinion
Ruins
Art
Corruption
America
Opinions
Hastened

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Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.
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A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
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Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
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That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: Shut up, he said, so that they do not realize that you are here with me.
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There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
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Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.
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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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Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
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Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.
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It is easier to sacrifice great than little things.
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For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
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Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.
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Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
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It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction I love myself too well.
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There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
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It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
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Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
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There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
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Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.
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