The Essays Quotes

“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Let the tutor not merely require a verbal account of what the boy has been taught but the meaning and the substance of it: let him judge how the child has profited from it not from the evidence of his memory but from that of his life. Let him take what the boy has just learned and make him show him dozens of different aspects of it and then apply it to just as many different subjects, in order to find out whether he has really grasped it and make it part of himself, judging the boy's progress by what Plato taught about education. Spewing up food exactly as you have swallowed it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to change the substance and the form of what it is given.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Let every foot have its own shoe.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain.

Therefore, Farewell:”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“I would rather be an authority on myself than on Cicero.”
― Michel De Montaigne (1533-1592), The Essays: A Selection

“Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“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.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“İnsanın doğuşunu görmekten herkes kaçar ama ölümünü görmeye hep koşa koşa gideriz. İnsanı öldürmek için gün ışığında, geniş meydanlar ararız ama onu yaratmak için karanlık köşelere gizleniriz.”
― Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“For I make others say what I cannot say so well,... I do not count my borrowings, but, weight them.... They are all, or very nearly all, from such famous and ancient names that they seem to identify themselves enough without me. ”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Bir amaca bağlanmayan ruh yolunu kaybeder. Çünkü her yerde olmak, hiçbir yerde olmamaktır.”
― Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Death is inevitable: does it matter when it comes? When Socrates was told that the Thirty Tyrants had condemned him to death, he retorted, 'And nature, them!'. How absurd to anguish over our passing into freedom from all anguish.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“It is not certain where Death awaits us, so let us await it everywhere. To think of death beforehand is to think of our liberty. Whoever learns how to die has learned how not to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint.xi”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“Certainly man is a remarkably vain, variable, and elusive subject.10 It is hard to base any constant, uniform judgment upon him.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“Kendimizden kaçmamız, kendimizde olup biteni bilmememizdendir.”
― Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Kanunlar doğru oldukları için değil, kanun oldukları için yürürlükte kalırlar. Kendilerini dinletmeleri akıldışı bir güçten gelir, başka bir şeyden değil. (..) Kanunlardan daha çok, daha ağır, daha geniş haksızlıklara yol açan ne vardır?”
― Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“I have never had scabies, but scratching is one of the most delightful of nature's bounties: and it is always ready to hand! But its neighbour, inconveniently close, is regret for having done it. (Book III, Chapter 13).”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“Anyone who is afraid of suffering suffers already of being afraid. (Book III, chapter 13)”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“You are not dying because you are ill: you are dying because you are alive. Death can kill you well enough without illness to help her. (Book III, chap 13)”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection

“For I never see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne

“To understand the essence and workings of insanity, Gallus Vibius strained his mind so that he tore his judgment from its seat and could never get it back again: he could boast he became mad through wisdom.1”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“If you did not have death, you would curse me incessantly for depriving you of it. Realizing its advantages, I have deliberately mixed a little bitterness into it to prevent you from embracing it too greedily and imprudently. To place you in the state of moderation I ask of you, of neither running from life nor fleeing from death, I have modulated them both between sweet and bitter.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“Anyone who teaches men how to die would teach them how to live.36”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“I keep telling myself: anything that can be done some other day can be done today.xiii”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

“Let us never allow ourselves to be carried away so completely by pleasure that we fail to recall from time to time in how many ways our happiness is prey to death and threatened by its grip.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays: with La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude