Michel de Montaigne

“ Though I could make myself feared, I had yet much rather make
myself beloved: there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so much
imbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition a
man can make is the kindness and affection of his own family ”

“ A father is very miserable who
has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of
his assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himself
worthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his
kindness and the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a rich
matter have their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of
worthy men in regard and reverence. ”

“ We
commonly see them fond of the most weak, ricketty, and deformed children;
or of those, if they have such, as are still hanging at the breast. For,
not having sufficient force of reason to choose and embrace that which is
most worthy, they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carried
away, where the impressions of nature are most alone; like animals that
know their young no longer than they give them suck. ”

“ As to the rest, it
is easy by experience to be discerned that this natural affection to
which we give so great authority has but very weak roots. For a very
little profit, we every day tear their own children out of the mothers'
arms, and make them take ours in their room: we make them abandon their
own to some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit ours, or to some
she-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them suck, what danger soever
they run thereby, but, moreover, to take any manner of care of them, that
they may wholly be occupied with the care of and attendance upon ours ”

“ For the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours;
the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty,
all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more vividly represent
us than the others. Plato adds, that these are immortal children that
immortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now,
histories being full of examples of the common affection of fathers to
their children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few of
this other kind. ”

“ Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. In
order to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in a
manner be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into
many very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation,
who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upon
their rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour,
the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock;
they are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich. ”

“ And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, when
grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and
austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe and
obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing the
effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse,
ridiculous to their own children. They have youth and vigour in
possession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world ”

“ A true and
regular affection ought to spring and increase with the knowledge they
give us of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural
propension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a truly
paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they be otherwise, still
rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature.
'Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves
more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile
simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their most
complete actions ”

“ Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into
this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder
in his time said: So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then,
whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he
lived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us
that wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us? 'Tis well for
old age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance,
and a proneness to being deceived. ”

“ It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass
over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are
most wrong. Injustice allures them, as the honour of their virtuous
actions does the good; and the more riches they bring with them, they are
so much the more good-natured, as women, who are handsome, are all the
more inclined and proud to be chaste.
'Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to the mothers,
till the children are old enough, according to law, to manage them ”

“ It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more against nature
to make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; they
ought to be plentifully provided for, to maintain themselves according to
their quality and age, by reason that necessity and indigence are much
more unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men ”

“ We are, moreover, too superstitious in vain
conjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words and actions
of children. Peradventure they might have done me an injustice, in
dispossessing me of my right, for having been the most dull and heavy,
the most slow and unwilling at my book, not of all my brothers only, but
of all the boys in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson,
or about any bodily exercise. 'Tis a folly to make an election out of
the ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are
so often deceived. ”

“ He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest
action; he who receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful is
much less lovable than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent,
supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. ”

“ The ancient Gauls' looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a
man to have society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, and
strictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the
keeping their virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is
abated and diverted by intercourse with women:
"Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
E lieto omai de' figli, era invilito
Negli affetti di padre et di marito."
["Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was
demoralised by his love as father and husband."
—Tasso, Gierus., x. 39.] ”

“ And seeing that nature appears to
have recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progression
of the successive pieces of this machine of hers, 'tis no wonder if, on
the contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great.
To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who
confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him
again: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that
every artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it
would be of him ”

“ This consideration it is which has made us so willingly to enact and give
force to that law, which was never yet seen by any one, by which women
are excluded the succession to our crown: and there is hardly a
government in the world where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by the
probability of reason that authorises it, though fortune has given it
more credit in some places than in others. 'Tis dangerous to leave the
disposal of our succession to their judgment, according to the choice
they shall make of children, which is often fantastic and unjust ”

“ A man by this course drives them to despair, and to
seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for
their own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good
extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of
it. ”

“ Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that to
keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises,
they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus.
In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were not permitted to
marry till after forty age, and yet the girls were allowed at ten.
'Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to give place to his
son who is twenty ”

“ Amongst other
particular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,— [De
Bello Gall., vi. r8.] —was one, that the sons never presented
themselves before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company
in public, till they began to bear arms ”