Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Whoever saw one physician use another’s prescription, without taking something away or adding something to it?[Qui a jamais vu un médecin confirmer tout simplement l’ordonnance d’un confrère, sans y rien ajouter ou retrancher?]

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.[Qui ne vit aucunement à autruy, ne vit guere à soy.]

When seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech.[Et au plus esleué throne du monde, si ne sommes nous assis, que sus nostre cul.]

We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.[Il falloit s’enquerir qui est mieux sçauant, non qui est plus sçauant.]

We only toil and labour to stuff the memory, and in the mean time leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
[Nous ne trauaillons qu’à remplir la memoire, et laissons l’entendement et la conscience vuide.]

Virtue will not be followed but for herself; and, if we sometimes borrow her mask for some other occasion, she presently pulls us own sake, it off again.[La vertu ne veut être pratiquée que pour elle-même; si, dans un autre but, on lui emprunte parfois son masque, elle nous l’arrache aussitôt du visage.]

To speak less of a man’s-self than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man’s value is pusillanimity and cowardice.[Dire de soi moins qu’il n’y en a, c’est de la sottise et non de la modestie; se faire moindre qu’on ne vaut, c’est, lâcheté et pusillanimité.]

To rub and polish our brains by contact with those of others.[Pour affiner notre cerveau par le frottement avec d’autres.]

There is nothing that imprints a thing so vividly on our memory as the desire to forget it.[Il n’est rien qui imprime si viuement quelque chose en nostre souuenance, que le desir de l’oublier.]

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.[Nostre verité de maintenant, ce n’est pas ce qui est, mais ce qui se persuade à autruy.]

The plague of man is the opinion of wisdom; and for this reason it is that ignorance is so recommended to us, by our religion, as proper to faith and obedience.[La peste de l’homme c’est l’opinion de sçauoir. Voyla pourquoy l’ignorance nous est tant recommandée par nostre religion, comme piece propre à la creance et à l’obeyssance.]

The most profound joy has more of gravity than gaiety in it.[L’extreme et plein contentement, plus de rassis que d’enioué.]