Michel de Montaigne

Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love.

No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.

L'utilité du vivre n'est pas en l'espace: elle est en l'usage.

Heureuse la mort qui oste le loisir aux apprests de tel equipage.

Je hay entre autres vices, cruellement la cruauté, et par nature et par jugement, comme l'extreme de tous les vices.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché _ l'homme quelque instinct _ l'inhumanité

Il n'est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes.

Les naturels sanguinaires _ l'endroit des bestes, tesmoignent une propension naturelle _ la cruauté.

J'accuse toute violence en l'education d'une ame tendre, qu'on dresse pour l'honneur, et la liberté.

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: __ourself, sir,_ replied the other, __y having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life.

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

As concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the entrance into which only is free, but the continuance in it forced and compulsory, having another dependence than that of our own free will, and a bargain commonly contracted to other ends, there almost always happens a thousand intricacies in it to unravel, enough to break the thread and to divert the current of a lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business or traffic with aught but itself. Moreover, to say truth, the ordinary talent of women is not such as is sufficient to maintain the conference and communication required to the support of this sacred tie; nor do they appear to be endued with constancy of mind, to sustain the pinch of so hard and durable a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there could be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted, where not only the souls might have this entire fruition, but the bodies also might share in the alliance, and a man be engaged throughout, the friendship would certainly be more full and perfect; but it is without example that this sex has ever yet arrived at such perfection; and, by the common consent of the ancient schools, it is wholly rejected from it.