Quote

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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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
Another
Mixed
True
Features
Women
Naturally
Puerile
Never
Confused
Lustre
Sex
Peculiarly
Sort
Requiring
Beauty
Prerogative
Though
Feature

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It is a human tendency to measure truth and error by our capacity.
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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?
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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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Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
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A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
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Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.
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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.
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Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
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It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
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I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.
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There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
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There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains the most universal quality is diversity.
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No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
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The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.
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There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
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I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
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Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
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