Montaigne Quotes

“The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.”
― Montaigne

“Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“[He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness)”
― Petrarch

“A comparably capacious embrace of beauty and pleasure - an embrace that somehow extends to death as well as life, to dissolution as well as creation - characterizes Montaigne's restless reflections on matter in motion, Cervantes's chronicle of his mad knight, Michelangelo's depiction of flayed skin, Leonardo's sketches of whirlpools, Caravaggio's loving attention to the dirty soles of Christ's feet.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous, and that those behind it have exceptional powers of resistance. [On witchburning in France during the 16th Century.]”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“(...) que a morte me encontre plantando minhas couves, mas despreocupado com ela e ainda mais com minha horta inacabada.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Ensaios: Que filosofar é aprender a morrer e outros ensaios

“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

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

“İstediğimiz kadar yüksek duvarlara çıkalım, yine kendi bacaklarımızla yürüyeceğiz. Dünyanın en yüksek tahtına da çıksak, yine kendi kıçımızla oturacağız.”
― Montaigne

“El amor nace también de la elección... su fuego.. es más activo, punzante, ávido; pero es un fuego temerario y voluble... un fuego febril.
...El de la amistad es un calor parejo y universal, templado... un calor constante y tranquilo, todo dulzura y pulimiento, sin asperezas.”
― Octavio Paz, The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism

“Meditar previamente sobre a morte é meditar previamente sobre a liberdade.Quem aprendeu a morrer desaprendeu a se subjugar. Não há nenhum mal na vida para aquele que bem compreendeu que a privação da vida não é um mal. Saber morrer liberta-nos de toda sujeição e imposição.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Ensaios: Que filosofar é aprender a morrer e outros ensaios

“Wives, children, and goods must be had, and especially health, by him that can get it; but we are not so to set our hearts upon them that our happiness must have its dependence upon them; we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat. And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself, that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michael De Montaigne, Vol. 2 of 3 (Classic Reprint): Translated Into English, With Very Considerable Amendments and Improvements From the Most Accurate French Edition of Peter Coste

“I have seen elsewhere houses in ruins, and statues both of gods and men: these are men still. 'Tis all true; and yet, for all that, I cannot so often revisit the tomb of that so great and so puissant city,—[Rome]— that I do not admire and reverence it. The care of the dead is recommended to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these dead; I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of those of my own house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre, and the Tiber before I knew the Seine.....
.... Finding myself of no use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither love it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me; and therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and houses, and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not interested in them. Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by persons whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort more than to hear a recital of their—acts or to read their writings? It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments: I pronounce those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears: Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the common parts: I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and sup. It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.
And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Ey benimle bu kadar güç işler görmüş yiğitler,
Bugün, üzüntülerinizi şarapla giderin;
Yarın, engin denize açılacağız”
― Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)

“Onun için kalabalıktan kaçmak yetmez, bir yerden başka bir yere gitmekle iş bitmez. İçimizdeki kalabalıktan kurtulmamız, kendimizi kendimizden koparmamız gerek, böyle anlarda.”
― Montaigne

“The Spanish had butchered the Indians with a clean conscience because they were confident that they knew what a normal human being was. Their reason told them it was someone who wore breeches, had one wife, didn’t eat spiders and slept in a bed.”
― Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

“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

“[…] on questioning why she looked so sad, she would remark, 'My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.'
'That's Montaigne, isn't it?'
And she would give the tiniest nod. 'I quote others only in order the better to express myself,' she'd say, which was itself, I sensed, another quote.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Some might question whether there is still any need for an essayist such as Montaigne. Twenty-first century people, in the developed world, are already individualistic to excess, as well as entwined with one another to a degree beyond the wildest dreams of a sixteenth-century winegrower. His sense of the “I” in all things may seem a case of preaching to the converted, or even feeding drugs to the addicted. But Montaigne offers more than an incitement to self-indulgence. The twenty-first century has everything to gain from a Montaignean sense of life, and, in its most troubled moments so far, it has been sorely in need of a Montaignean politics. It could use his sense of moderation, his love of sociability and courtesy, his suspension of judgement, and his subtle understanding of the psychological mechanisms involved in confrontation and conflict. It needs his conviction that no vision of heaven, no imagined Apocalypse, and no perfectionist fantasy can ever outweigh the tiniest of selves in the real world. It is unthinkable to Montaigne that one could ever ”gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions.” To believe that life could demand any such thing is to forget what day-to-day existence actually is. It entails forgetting that, when you look at a puppy held over a bucket of water, or even at a cat in the mood for play, you are looking at a creature that looks back at you. No abstract principles are involved; there are only two individuals, face to face, hoping for the best from one another.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“To learn that one has said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; one must learn that one is nothing but a fool, a much more comprehensive and important lesson".”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Ben yazarken rastgele gittiğim için bol bol hatalara düşerim. Bunları pekala düzeltebilirdim. Ama o zaman, benim adetim, malım olmuş kusurları düzeltmekle kendi kendimi yanlış tanıtmış olurdum… ben dikkatsizlikten gelen hatalarımı düzeltsem bile, bende adet haline gelmiş olanları düzeltemem. Ben hep böyle konuşmuyor muyum? Her yerde böyle çiğ çiğ göstermiyor muyum kendimi? Sorun yok. Yazarken aradığım da bu zaten. Herkes kitabımda beni, bende kitabımı görsün.
(Kitap 3, bölüm V)”
― Michel de Montaigne, ... Essayes of Montaigne

“... vi si trova, lampeggiante nelle tenebre di allora e di oggi, allora di incredibile azzardo ma lasciata cadere con incredibile e adorabile noncuranza, la frase che io considero del più sublime laicismo: "Dopotutto, è un mettere le proprie congetture a ben alto prezzo, il volere, per esse, fare arrostire vivo un uomo". Quell'impagabile "dopotutto", quel ridurre a "congetture" tutte le fanatiche e potenti certezze! (su un passo degli Essais di Montaigne)”
― Leonardo Sciascia, La sentenza memorabile

“La guerra di quelle che Montaigne chiamava congetture infuriava, la Francia ne era insanguinata. La congettura cattolica, la congettura protestante. Come Pessoa nella poesia sul Natale, Montaigne pensava che la verità né veniva né se ne andava: semplicemente mutava l'errore, mutavano gli errori.”
― Leonardo Sciascia, La sentenza memorabile

“Of their friendship, Montaigne wrote: ‘If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.’
Louis touched his fingers to the page.
Yes, he thought. Yes.”
― John Connolly, The Woman in the Woods

“Montaigne and Shakespeare have each been held up as the first truly modern writers, capturing that distinctive modern sense of being unsure where you belong, who you are, and what you are expected to do. The Shakespearean scholar J. M. Robertson believed that all literature since these two authors could be interpreted as an elaboration of their joint theme: the discovery of self-divided consciousness.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“After you expire, not one of all these things will fill you will desire. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death but still more of my unfinished garden, that to philosophize is to learn to die." - Montaigne”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“Christians had always known that they only accounted for a fraction of humanity, but the age of exploration confronted them with the vastness of the non-Christian world as never before. A famous summary in the 1620s guessed that no more than a fifth of humanity were Christian, and that many so-called Christians were so beset with ‘superstitions’ as scarcely to deserve the name. ‘That horrible consideration of diversity of Religions’ inevitably fostered ‘Atheistical spirits’. As Montaigne asked about the cannibals: what reason, laziness aside, do we have to believe that we are right and they are wrong?”
― Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

“Michel de Montaigne (1553-1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for
its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight.
Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers; his massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.”
― Roger Macdonald Andrew, Forgive: Finding Inner Peace Through Words of Wisdom

“So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him find us "parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux". But enough of death; it is life that matters.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader