Michel de Montaigne Quotes on Mind
Michel de Montaigne made his own mind the principal subject of the Essais, and the quotes gathered here show the candour and self-scrutiny he brought to it. Montaigne examined the mind's weaknesses as readily as its powers: he confessed that the thing he feared most was fear, and observed wryly that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. He insisted on the basic equality of minds beneath differences of rank, since the souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold, and on honesty as the discipline proper to thinking, holding that no man should be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think. Drawn from the Essais, these passages present the mind not as an abstract faculty to be theorised but as a particular, fallible thing to be observed closely and reported truthfully.
Quotes
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“The thing I fear most is fear.”
C'est ce de quoi j'ai le plus de peur que la peur. -
Attributed to Michel de Montaigne:
“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
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“A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.”
Ch. 9. Of Liars (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) -
“It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.”
Book I | Ch. 9. Of Liars (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842) -
“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”
Book II | Ch. 12 (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) -
“Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire : "Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think."”
Book III | Book III, Ch. 4 [2] -
“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws , he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”
Book III