Michel de Montaigne

“ And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what
they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth
slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they
pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention
to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that
nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than
they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more
sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes. ”

“ Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the
extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine
ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also
attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,
such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me
withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes
that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all
enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant. ”

“ Does it not seem a lunatic humour in
the Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to
lay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with the
fruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep? I likewise say that
we love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without
its consent and desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are some
that are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besides
good-will may procure us this favour from the ladies ”

“ What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?
Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here. 'Tis folly to
examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
heals us. You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof. ”

“ I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
nothing.
They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
virtue. ”

“ Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly
austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh. Virtue is a
pleasant and gay quality.
I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,
who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:
I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their
eyes. 'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his
pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:
"Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire." ”

“ All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented
her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but
faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as
marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more
than grace and beauty. Men do not marry for themselves, let them say
what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and
family ”

“ I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done
from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity. Now I
will be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its
excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly. Therefore, lest
I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the
intervals and truces my infirmities allow me:
"Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis." ”

“ Both we and
they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural
than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to
our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.
The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this
vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages
it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go
to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,
rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so
difficult a guard. ”

“ I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
generation by the mediation of beauty. ”

“ As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as
entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have
into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have
often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in
favour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour of
mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a
body that was never so little in decadence. ”

“ How? if dreams sometimes engage them so
far that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
desire. If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
then? Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in
pursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes,
into every woman's arms who would accept them. The Scythian women put
out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might
have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser. ”

“ Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
kill him. ”

“ Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in
the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all
the advantage. I have known some whose reputation has for a great while
suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's
universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;
every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and
said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced
to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour. ”

“ Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
authors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre. ”

“ I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece of
furniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part of
the water-closet. I love to traffic with them a little in private;
public conversation is without favour and without savour. In farewells,
we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave
of; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are our
last embraces. ”

“ Faunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any
man whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men. They must
become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally
lies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom,
not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with
singular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue. ”

“ There are
people who conceal their life:
"Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,"
["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes."
—Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities. Not only many
sects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and
there is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored. We are
only ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry our
intellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool! ”

“ I am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of
marriage, than I either promised or expected. 'Tis in vain to kick, when
a man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his
liberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself
within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it. ”

“ Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
than to beget one. 'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
obstinately to disdain the sex. ”

“ For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that
"bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age." These
verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more
adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and
the vices less:
"Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,
Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent."
["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too
frequent in her rites."—A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A
philosopher should converse with princes.] ”

“ If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human
societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.
It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those
within despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was more
commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will,"
said he; "he will repent." 'Tis a contract to which the common
saying:
"Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,"
["Man to man is either a god or a wolf."—Erasmus, Adag.] ”

“ Is it to say, the less we expend in
words, we may pay so much the more in thinking? For it is certain that
the words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the
best and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them,
no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without
being, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that
most practises it is bound to say least of it. 'Tis an act that we have
placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even
to accuse and judge it ”

“ Is there any
deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?
It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of
another's secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge. I can
keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence
to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not
by obligation. 'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be
secret, if a man be not a liar to boot. ”

“ But have I not
reason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are
somewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in
a body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and
support it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the
appetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
break up a man alive ”