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Quote by Michel de Montaigne

“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.”

Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Author

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance philosopher, essayist, and writer. He is considered one of the most significant figures in the history of the essay. Montaigne's work, particularly his book 'Essays', has been influential in the development of modern prose. more

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“While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.”

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Book:Complete Essays

Source: Complete Essays

“Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.”

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Source: The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters

“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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Book:The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters

Source: The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters

“I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.”

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Book:Complete Essays

Source: Complete Essays

“I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.”

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Source: Complete Essays

“My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.”

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Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.”

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Book:The Essays

Source: The Essays

“We imagine much more appropriately an artisan on his toilet seat or on his wife than a great president, venerable by his demeanorand his ability. It seems to us that they do not stoop from their lofty thrones even to live.”

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Book:Complete Essays

Source: Complete Essays

“It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.”

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“True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.”

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Author:Michel de Montaigne