Michel de Montaigne

“ What
danger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determine
ours, according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation of
example and consequence? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand,
sending colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should not
carry along with them any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest suits
should get footing in that new world, as being a science in its own
nature, breeder of altercation and division; judging with Plato, "that
lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country." ”

“ I had a quartan ague four
or five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, if
not calm, yet pleasant. If the pain be without me, the weakness and
languor do not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, that
beget a horror in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than a
thousand passions and agitations of the mind that I see about me. I make
up my mind no more to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do I
more complain of the natural decadence that I feel in myself:
"Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?" ”

“ I enjoy it double to what others do; for the
measure of its fruition depends upon our more or less application to it.
Chiefly that I perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extend
it in weight; I will stop the promptitude of its flight by the
promptitude of my grasp; and by the vigour of using it compensate the
speed of its running away. In proportion as the possession of life is
more short, I must make it so much deeper and fuller.
Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity ”

“ I am sorry for several gentlemen who,
through the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and health
wholly shut themselves up: it were better to endure a cough, than, by
disuse, for ever to lose the commerce of common life in things of so
great utility. Malignant science, to interdict us the most pleasant
hours of the day! Let us keep our possession to the last; for the most
part, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and corrects his
constitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of contempt. ”

“ Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most
solid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is,
suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my
thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a
barbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable
with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the
dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by
a wise man ”

“ If others excel you in knowledge, in gracefulness, in
strength, or fortune, you have alternative resources at your disposal;
but to give place to them in stability of mind, you can blame no one for
that but yourself. Death is more abject, more languishing and
troublesome, in bed than in a fight: fevers and catarrhs as painful and
mortal as a musket-shot. Whoever has fortified himself valiantly to bear
the accidents of common life need not raise his courage to be a soldier:
"Vivere, mi Lucili, militare est."
["To live, my Lucilius, is (to make war) to be a soldier."
—Seneca, Ep., 96.] ”

“ I do not love to cure one disease by another; I hate
remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself. To be
subject to the colic and subject to abstain from eating oysters are two
evils instead of one; the disease torments us on the one side, and the
remedy on the other. Since we are ever in danger of mistaking, let us
rather run the hazard of a mistake, after we have had the pleasure. ”

“ Let us a little
permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs
than we. But such an one died of it; and so shall you: if not of that
disease, of another. And how many have not escaped dying, who have had
three physicians at their tails? Example is a vague and universal
mirror, and of various reflections. If it be a delicious medicine, take
it: 'tis always so much present good. I will never stick at the name nor
the colour, if it be pleasant and grateful to the palate: pleasure is one
of the chiefest kinds of profit. ”

“ Oh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in
getting their wives' maidenheads than in its lesson.
This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as
he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more
force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according to
him, goes by no means alone—he is not so fantastic—but only it goes
first; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of
pleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than
prudent and just. ”

“ Pain,
pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible
of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.
I have a special vocabulary of my own; I "pass away time," when it is ill
and uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: "I taste it over
again and adhere to it"; one must run over the ill and settle upon the
good. ”

“ This
is most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite
doctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we find
any end of the need of interpretating? is there, for all that, any
progress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any
fewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in
its first infancy? On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we
can no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and
barriers. Men do not know the natural disease of the mind ”

“ A
man had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as
there are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who
hazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship;
for 'tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for
our own good. I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are
more than his good ones: Plato requires three things in him who will
examine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, boldness. ”

“ My health is to maintain my
wonted state without disturbance. I see that sickness puts me off it on
one side, and if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will put me off
on the other; so that by fortune and by art I am out of my way.
I believe nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by the
use of things to which I have been so long accustomed. 'Tis for custom
to give a form to a man's life, such as it pleases him; she is all in all
in that: 'tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she best
pleases. ”

“ Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;
witness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state wherein
we see nations live who have no other. Some there are, who for their
only judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains,
to determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose out
some one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies. ”

“ There is so
much hazard, and so many steps to arrive at safety, that there is no end
on't before they have unmuffled you of a kerchief, and then of a cap,
before they allow you to walk abroad and take the air, to drink wine, to
lie with your wife, to eat melons, 'tis odds you relapse into some new
distemper. The stone has this privilege, that it carries itself clean
off: whereas the other maladies always leave behind them some impression
and alteration that render the body subject to a new disease, and lend a
hand to one another. ”

“ From my youth, I have sometimes kept out of the way at meals; either to
sharpen my appetite against the next morning (for, as Epicurus fasted and
made lean meals to accustom his pleasure to make shift without abundance,
I, on the contrary, do it to prepare my pleasure to make better and more
cheerful use of abundance) ; or else I fasted to preserve my vigour for
the service of some action of body or mind: for both the one and the
other of these is cruelly dulled in me by repletion ”

“ He
was seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintain
at need a severe abstinence. He was seen ever to go to the wars, and
walk upon ice, with bare feet; to wear the same robe, winter and summer;
to surpass all his companions in patience of bearing hardships, and to
eat no more at a feast than at his own private dinner. ”

“ Now if I feel anything
stirring, do not fancy that I trouble myself to consult my pulse or my
urine, thereby to put myself upon some annoying prevention; I shall soon
enough feel the pain, without making it more and longer by the disease of
fear. He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. To
which may be added that the doubts and ignorance of those who take upon
them to expound the designs of nature and her internal progressions, and
the many false prognostics of their art, ought to give us to understand
that her ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown ”

“ I
am in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help
it, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head,
where my life and honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligence
of my attorney than on my own innocence. I would venture myself with
such justice as would take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill;
where I had as much to hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient pay
to a man who does better than not to do amiss. Our justice presents to
us but one hand, and that the left hand, too ”

“ Nature has also, on the
other side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more
than two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a
total abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself with
wind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding great
inconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in night
marches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hours
my stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that I
always vomit before the day can break. ”

“ Whatever happens
contrary to the course of nature may be troublesome; but what comes
according to her should always be pleasant:
"Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis."
["All things that are done according to nature
are to be accounted good."—Cicero, De Senect., c. 19.]
And so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseases
is violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, is
of all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious:
"Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas." ”

“ The sages lived after that
manner; and that inimitable emulation to virtue, which astonishes us both
in the one and the other Cato, that humour of theirs, so severe as even
to be importunate, gently submits itself and yields to the laws of the
human condition, of Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of their
sect, that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent in
the use of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:
"Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus." ”

“ We have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example,
I found radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, and
now again grateful. In several other things, I find my stomach and
appetite vary after the same manner; I have changed again and again from
white wine to claret, from claret to white wine.
I am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts and
feasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy of
digestion than flesh. ”

“ And, as 'tis held of virtue, that
it is not greater for having continued longer, so do I hold of truth,
that for being older it is none the wiser. I often say, that it is mere
folly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; their
fertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato.
But is it not that we seek more honour from the quotation, than from the
truth of the matter in hand? ”

“ I therein pay what is due to old
age, and I cannot expect a better bargain; that society ought to comfort
me, being fallen into the most common infirmity of my age; I see
everywhere men tormented with the same disease, and am honoured by the
fellowship, forasmuch as men of the best quality are most frequently
afflicted with it: 'tis a noble and dignified disease: that of such as
are struck with it, few have it to a less degree of pain; that these are
put to the trouble of a strict diet and the daily taking of nauseous
potions, whereas I owe my better state purely to my good fortune ”

“ The art of physic is not so fixed, that we need be without authority for
whatever we do; it changes according to climates and moons, according to
Fernel and to Scaliger.— [Physicians to Henry II.] —If your physician
does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such
and such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another that
shall not be of his opinion; the diversity of medical arguments and
opinions embraces all sorts and forms. ”

“ To satisfy one doubt, they give me three; 'tis the Hydra's
head. Socrates asked Menon, "What virtue was." "There is," says Menon,
"the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private
person, of an old man and of a child." "Very fine," cried Socrates,
"we were in quest of one virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole
swarm." We put one question, and they return us a whole hive. As no
event, no face, entirely resembles another, so do they not entirely
differ: an ingenious mixture of nature. If our faces were not alike, we
could not distinguish man from beast ”

“ As to health, I since by experience find, on
the contrary, that it is better to dine, and that the digestion is better
while awake. I am not very used to be thirsty, either well or sick; my
mouth is, indeed, apt to be dry, but without thirst; and commonly I never
drink but with thirst that is created by eating, and far on in the meal;
I drink pretty well for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a relishing
meal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thrice
precisely ”