Michel de Montaigne

“ And if we will take hold of any advantage tending to that purpose, that it is in our power to seize upon them, to employ them to our service, and to use them at our pleasure; it is but the same oddes we have one upon another. To which purpose we have our slaves or bond-men; and were not the Climacides certain women in Syria, which creeping on al foure upon the ground, served the ladies in steed of footstoles or ladders to get up into their coachs? Where the greater part of free men, for very slight causes, abandon both their life and being to the power of others. ”

“ Shame is matter of some consequence. Concealing, reservation and circumspection are parts of estimation. That sensuality under the maske of Vertu did very ingeniously procure not to be prostituted in the midst of highwaies, not trodden upon and seen by the common sort, alledging the dignity and commodity of her wonted Cabinets. Whereupon some say that to forbid and remove the common brothel-houses is not only to spread whoredome every where, which only was allotted to those places, but also to incite idle and vagabond men to that vice by reason of the difficultie. ”

“ Men and impious actions have every where had correspondent events. Heathen histories acknowledge dignitie, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed for their benefit and instruction in their fabulous religion: God of his mercy daining, peradventure, to foster by his temporal blessings the budding and tender beginnings of such brute knowledge as naturall reason gave them of him athwart the false images of their deluding dreames: Not only false but impious and injurious are those which man hath forged and devised by his owne invention. ”

“ They cannot so order or rule him, not in truth onely, but in imagination, but still some cadence or sound is discovered which escapeth their architecture, bad as it is, and botched together with a thousand false patches and fantasticall peeces. And they have no reason to be excused: for to painters when they pourtray the heaven, the earth, the seas, the hills, the scattered Ilands, we pardon them if they but represent us with some slight apparence of them ”

“ We have no communication with being; for every humane nature is ever in the middle betwee ne being borne and dying; giving nothing of it selfe but an obscure apparence and shadow, and an uncertaine and weake opinion. And if perhaps you fix your thought to take its being, it would be even as if one should go about to graspe the water: for, how much the more he shal close and presse that which by its owne nature is ever gliding, so much the more he shall loose what he would hold and fasten. ”

“ The senses are to some more obscure and dimme, and to some more open and quicke. We receive things differently, according as they are and seeme unto us. Things being then so uncertaine and full of controversie, it is no longer a wonder if it be told us that we may avouch snow to seeme white unto us; but to affirme that it's such in essence and in truth, we cannot warrant ourselves: which foundation being so shaken, all the science in the world must necessarily goe to wracke. What, doe our senses themselves hinder one another? ”

“ Gods workes doe travers our imaginations,
And crosse our workers in divers different fashions.
Like unto that which Empedocles was wont often to scatter amongst his bookes, as moved by a divine furie and forced by truth. No, no, we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are hid from us; there is not one that we may establish, how and what it is. ”

“ Behold the ancient considerations which have given the first motion to this famous torrent, so full of dignitie, of honour and reverence, you shall finde them so light and weake that these men which will weigh all and complaine of reason, and who receive nothing upon trust and authoritie, it is no wonder if their judgments are often far distant from common judgement. Men that take Natures first image for a patterne it is no marvaile if in most of their opinions they miss the common-beaten path. ”

“ There is great reason why the spirit of man should be so strictly embarred. In his study, as in all things else, he must have his steps numbered and ordered. The limits of his pursuite must be cut out by art. He is bridled and fettered with and by religions, lawes, customes, knowledge, precepts, paines, and recompences, both mortall and immortall; yet we see him, by meanes of his volubility and dissolution, escape all these bonds. It is a vaine body that hath no way about him to be seized on or cut off: a diverse and deformed body, on which neither knot nor hold may be fastened. ”

“ I have seen amongst us men brought by sea from distant countries, whose language, because we could in no wise understand, and that their fashions, their countenance, and their clothes did altogether differ from ours, who of us did not deem them brutish and savage? Who did not impute their mutenesse into stupiditie or beastlines, and to see them ignorant of the French tongue, of our kissing the hands, of our low-lowting courtesies, of our behaviour and carriage, by which without contradiction, humane nature ought to take her patterne? ”

“ Me thinks learning hath a place among st things necessarie for mans life, as glorie, noblenesse, dignitie, or at most as riches, and such other qualities, which indeed stead the same; but afar off and more in conceipt than by Nature. We have not much more need of offices, of rules, and lawes how to live in our commonwealth than the cranes and ants have in theirs. Which notwithstanding, we see how orderly and without instruction they maintaine themselves. If man were wise he would value everything according to its worth, and as it is either more profitable or more necessarie for life. ”

“ Let us ingenuously confesse that only God and Faith hath told it us: for it is no lesson of Nature, nor comming from our reason. And he that shall both within and without narrowly sift and curiously sound his being and his forces without this divine privilege, he that shall view and consider man without flattering him, shall nor finde nor see either efficacie or facultie in him that tasteth of any other thing but death and earth. ”

“ And concerning privileges of familiaritie and sympathie caused by conversation, is it not oft seen how some make cats, dogs, and hares so tame, so gentle, and so milde, that, without harming one another, they shall live and continue together? But that which experience teacheth sea-faring men, especially those that come into the seas of Sicilie, of the qualitie and condition of the Halcyon bird, or as some call it alcedo or kings-fisher, exceeds all mens conceit. In what kinds of creature did ever nature so much prefer both their hatching, sitting, brooding, and birth? ”

“ What assurance may we then take of so unconstant and wavering a thing, subject by its owne condition to the power of trouble, never marching but a forced and borrowed pace? If our judgement be in the hands of sickenes itselfe and of perturbation; if by rashnesse and folly it be retained to receive the impression of things, what assurance may we expect at his hands? Dares not Philosophie thinke that men produce their greatest effects, and neerest approaching to divinity when they are besides themselves, furious, and madde? We amend our selves by the privation of reason, and by her drooping. ”

“ I saw the advantages of the subject I sought after evidently to swell and grow greater, and much to encrease by the winde of my imagination; and the difficulties of my enterprise to become more easie and plaine, and my discourse and conscience to shrinke and draw backe. But that fire being evaporated all on a sodaine, as by the flashing of a lightning, my soule to reassume an other sight, an other state, and other judgement. The difficultie in my retreate seemed great and invincible, and the very same things of another taste and shew than the fervency of desire had presented them unto me. ”

“ Protagoras and Ariston gave the justice of the lawes no other essence, but the authority and opinion of the law giver, and that excepted, both good and honest lost their qualities, and remained but vaine and idle names of indifferent things. Thrasymachus, in Plato, thinkes there is no other right but the commoditie of the superior. There is nothing wherein the world differeth so much as in customes and lawes. ”

“ A gust of contrarie winds, the croking of a flight of Ravens, the false pase of a horse, the casual flight of an Eagle, a dream, a sodaine voyce, a false signe, a mornings mist, an evenings fogge, are enough to overthrow, sufficient to overwhelme and able to pull him to the ground. Let the Sunne but shine hot upon his face, hee faints and swelters with heat: cast but a little dust in his eyes, as to the Bees mentioned by our Poet, all our ensignes, all our legions, yea great Pompey himselfe, in the forefront of them is overthrowne and put to rout. ”

“ How could that ancient God more evidently accuse, in humane knowledge, the ignorance of divine essence, and teach men that their religion was but a peece of their owne invention, fit to combine their societies then in declaring, as he did, to those which sought the instruction of it, by his sacred Tripos, that the true worshipping of God was that which he found to be observed by the custome of the place where he lived? ”

“ Our fraile and defective condition ought at least make us demeane our selves more moderately and more circumspectly in our changes. We should remember that whatsoever we receive in our understanding we often receive false things, and that it is by the same instruments which many times contradict and deceive themselves. And no marvell if they contradict themselves, being so easy to encline, and upon very slight occasions subject to waver and turne. ”

“ Whereas, in other creatures there is nothing but we love and pleaseth our senses: so that even from their excrements and ordure we draw not only dainties to eat, but our richest ornaments and perfumes. This discourse of beautie toucheth only our common order, and is not so sacrilegious as it intendeth or dareth to comprehend those divine, supernaturally and extraordinarie beauties which sometimes are seen to shine amongst as, even as stars under a corporall and terrestriall veile. ”

“ It is dangerous to reduce them to their beginning: In rowling on they swell and grow greater and greater, as doe our rivers: follow them upward into their source, and you shall find them but a bubble of water, scarce to be discerned, which in gliding on swelleth so proud and gathers so much strength. ”

“ With twice six signes star-shining in the aire.
Obliquely raisde, the waine
O' th' Moone doth entertaine.
They are all dreames, and mad follies. Why will not nature one day be pleased to open her bosome to us, and make us perfectly see the meanes and conduct of her motions, and enable our eyes to judge of them? Oh, good God, what abuses, and what distractions should we find in our poor understanding and weake knowledge! I am deceived if she hold one thing directly in its point, and I shall part hence more ignorant of all other things than mine ignorance. ”

“ Preachers know that the emotion which surpriseth them whilst they are in their earnest speech doth animate them towards belief, and that being angrie we more violently give our selves to defend our proposition, emprint it in our selves, and embrace the same with more vehemencie and approbation than we did being in our temperate and reposed sense. ”

“ KNOWLEDGE is without all Contradiction a most profitable and chiefe ornament, Those who despise it declare evidently their sottishnesse: Yet doe not I value it at so excessive a rate as some have done; namely Herillus the Philosopher, who grounded his chiefe felicitie upon it, and held that it lay in her power to make us content and wise: which I cannot beleeve, nor that which others have said, that Knowledge is the mother of all vertue, and that all vice proceedeth of ignorance. ”

“ It was that which a Roman Senator said, that 'their predecessors had their breath stinking of garlike, and their stomacke perfumed with a good, conscience:' and contrary, the men of his time outwardly smelt of nothing but sweet odours, but inwardly they stunke of all vices: which, in mine opinion, is as much to say they had much knowledge and sufficiency, but great want of honesty. Incivility, ignorance, simplicity, and rudenesse are commonly joyned with innocency. ”

“ Why say we that skill to discerne and knowledge to make choyce (gotten by art and acquired by discourse) of things good for this life, and availfull against sicknesse, and to distinguish of those which are hurtfull, and to know the vertue of reubarb, qualitie of oake ferne and operation of polipodie, is only peculiar unto man? ”