Michel de Montaigne. The most famous aphorisms

Free technical library

APHORISMS OF FAMOUS PEOPLE
Free library / Aphorisms of famous people / Michel de Montaigne

Aphorisms of famous people. Michel de Montaigne

Aphorisms of famous people

Free library / Aphorisms of famous people

Comments on the article

Michel de Montaigne. The most famous aphorisms

The scourge of man is imaginary knowledge.
Prudence is also characterized by extremes, and it needs measure no less than frivolity.
Let us beware lest old age put more wrinkles on our soul than on our face.
There are people who get better from one type of medicine.
In every state, the thirst for glory grows with the freedom of the subjects and decreases with it: glory never gets along with slavery.
At the beginning of all philosophy lies wonder.
In general, all the food I have cooked up here is only the result of my life experience, which for any sane person can be useful as a call to act in a completely opposite way.
In dealing with people, the human mind achieves amazing clarity.
Nothing in nature is useless.
Great deeds must be done, and not pondered endlessly.
The greatness of victory is measured by the degree of its difficulty.
An oar immersed in water seems broken to us. Thus, it is important not only what we see, but also how we see it.
Instead of seeking to know others, we are concerned only with how to expose ourselves, and our cares are directed rather to keep our goods from stale than to acquire a new one for ourselves.
The lust that we feel for a woman is directed only to the desire to get rid of the torment generated by ardent and violent desire.
All disasters are not worth striving for death in order to avoid them.
Everything in a person goes uphill and downhill with him.
Any belief can be strong enough to make people stand up for it, even at the cost of their lives.
Stupidity and confusion in feelings is not a thing that can be corrected by good advice alone.
A vile and senseless occupation - to endlessly deal with your money, finding pleasure in their sorting out, weighing and counting! Here, indeed, is the way in which greed creeps into us on the sly.
The affairs of state require a bolder morality.
A lady who has not experienced temptations has no right to boast of her chastity.
Trees - and those seem to make groans when they are maimed.
It takes more intelligence to teach another than to teach yourself.
The valor for which one so longs to be famous can, on occasion, be just as brilliant, whether we are wearing home dress or battle armor, whether we are at home or in a military camp, whether our hand is lowered or raised to strike.
The deed is worthy of praise, not the person himself.
Other vices dull the mind, while drunkenness destroys it.
The soul profits for itself decisively from everything. Even delusions, even dreams - and they serve her purposes: everything will go to work with her, if only to protect us from danger and anxiety.
If it were given to me to mold myself according to my own taste, then there is no such form - however beautiful it may be - that I would like to squeeze into, so as not to part with it ever again.
If a person only wanted to be happy, it would be easy, but everyone wants to be happier than others, and this is almost always very difficult, because we usually consider others happier than they really are.
If wives love to look at their husbands from the front, shouldn't they, if necessary, be just as willing to look at their backs?
If teachers enlighten their many students by teaching them all the same lesson and demanding the same behavior from them, although their abilities are not at all the same, then it is not surprising that among a huge crowd of children there are only two or three children who really benefit from such teaching.
If you want to be cured of ignorance, you must confess it.
If the ruler's generosity is whimsical and excessive, I prefer that he be miserly.
If I lie, I offend myself more than the person I lied about.
It is a pitiful fate to have such power that everything bows before you.
Desire for what we don't have destroys the enjoyment of what we have.
Marrying without tying yourself in anything is a betrayal.
Women are not at all to blame for the fact that sometimes they refuse to obey the rules of conduct established for them by society - after all, these rules were composed by men, and moreover, without any participation of women.
Life in itself is neither good nor evil: it is a receptacle for both good and evil, depending on what you yourself have turned it into.
An old and well-known evil is always preferable to the evil of a new and unknown one.
Children's games are not games at all, and it is more correct to look at them as the most significant and thoughtful occupation of this age.
To deal with people who admire us and are inferior to us in everything is a very insipid pleasure and even harmful to us ...
Truth does not grow wiser with age.
True dignity is like a river: the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.
The punishment that befell you is still very mild compared to what others endure: This is truly a fatherly punishment.
The picture of so many state troubles and changes in the destinies of various peoples teaches us not to be too proud of ourselves.
Book learning is an ornament, not a foundation.
When we say that we fear death, we think first of all of pain, its usual predecessor.
When science is used as it should be, it is the noblest and greatest achievement of the human race.
When judging an individual act, before evaluating it, one must take into account various circumstances and take into account the whole appearance of the person who committed it.
When we don't have real diseases, science rewards us with ones that it has invented.
When the philosopher Diogenes needed money, he did not say that he would borrow it from friends, he said that he would ask his friends to return the debt to him.
Eloquence, diverting attention to itself, damages the very essence of things.
He who is afraid of suffering is already suffering from fear.
Whoever is infected with the fear of disease is already infected with the disease of fear.
Whoever overthrows the laws threatens the most respectable people with a whip and a rope.
Whoever hit further than the target, just as accurately missed as the one who did not hit the target.
Who teaches people to die, he teaches them to live.
The best state system for any people is that which has preserved it as a whole.
The best souls are those with more flexibility and variety.
Love is a violent attraction to that which runs away from us.
Any person can say something corresponding to the truth, but not so many will be able to express it beautifully, reasonably, laconicly. That is why what irritates me is not what is said wrong out of ignorance, but the inability to say it well.
People don't believe in anything as firmly as what they know least about.
The mass is characterized by stupidity and frivolity, because of which it allows itself to be led anywhere, fascinated by the sweet sounds of beautiful words and unable to check with the mind and know the true essence of things.
Between some people and others, the distance is much greater than between some people and animals.
The measure of life is not in its duration, but in how you use it.
Our opinions grow one into another: the first serves as a stem for the second, the second for the third. This is how we go from step to step. And it turns out that the one who climbed the highest often gets more honor than he deserved, because, having climbed onto the shoulders of the previous one, he only rises a little above him.
You can also learn from the enemy.
A well-built brain is worth more than a well-filled brain.
We take into storage other people's thoughts and knowledge, that's all. However, you need to make them your own.
We cannot think of a better praise for a person than saying that he is gifted by nature.
We cannot do without marriage, and at the same time we degrade it. Here, the same thing happens that is observed near the cages: the birds that are in the wild are desperately trying to get into them, those that are locked up are just as desperately trying to get out.
We are not accustomed to seek our highest satisfaction in the soul and expect from her the main help, despite the fact that it is she who is the only and sovereign mistress of both our state and our behavior.
We are not so much freed from our vices as we exchange them for others.
We work only to fill our memory, leaving the mind and conscience idle.
Name me some of the purest and most outstanding deed, and I undertake to discover in it, with full plausibility, fifty vicious intentions.
Peoples brought up in freedom and accustomed to govern themselves consider any other form of government to be something unnatural and monstrous. Those who are accustomed to the monarchy act in no other way. And no matter what opportunity fate gives them to change the state order, even when they have got rid of some unbearable sovereign with the greatest difficulty, they are in a hurry to put another in his place, because they cannot decide to hate enslavement.
The outward appearance of a man serves as a very small guarantee for him, but nevertheless, it represents something significant.
A true friend is one whom I would trust in everything that concerns me more than myself.
Science is a great ornament and a very useful tool.
Science is an excellent drug, but no drug is so stable that it can be preserved without being corrupted and changed if the vessel in which it is stored is bad.
Science is suitable only for strong minds, and they are very rare.
Our wit seems to be more characteristic of speed and suddenness, while the mind - solidity and slowness.
Our bodies have more or less the same build and the same tendencies. Our soul, on the other hand, is infinitely changeable and takes the most diverse forms, while possessing the ability to adapt to itself and to its state of sensation of our body and all its other manifestations.
Not having achieved what they wanted, they pretended that they wanted what they had achieved.
It is no less torment to manage your family than an entire nation.
Ignorance is of two kinds: one is illiterate and precedes knowledge, the other is swaggering and follows it.
It is impossible to have an honest and sincere argument with a fool.
It is not enough that education does not spoil us, it is necessary that it change us for the better.
We cannot rely on the incomes that we only hope to receive, no matter how true they may seem to us.
There is no teacher more unmerciful and insidious than our habit. Little by little, furtively, she takes power over us, but, starting modestly and good-naturedly, over time, she takes root and strengthens in us, until finally she throws off the cover from her imperious and despotic face, and then we do not dare to look at her anymore. .
There is no answer more humiliating than a contemptuous silence.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
There is no trick or technique in the use of weapons during combat that we would consider bad, if only they would help to repel a blow directed at us.
No helmsman performs his duties while sitting on the shore.
Neither that which precedes death nor that which follows it belongs to it.
Nothing is more subject to constant change than laws.
Nothing gives rise to such confusion in the state as the innovations introduced, all changes are beneficial only to lawlessness and tyranny.
It is necessary that we live under the protection of law and power, and not thanks to someone's gratitude or mercy.
Accusations against oneself are always believed, self-praise - never.
It is a dangerous business to attack a person who has only one means of salvation left - a weapon, because necessity is a cruel mentor.
Describing the past is less of a risk than describing the present, because in this case the writer is only responsible for accurately conveying what he has borrowed from others.
There are as many vices from lack of self-respect as from excessive self-respect.
The hallmark of wisdom is a consistently joyful outlook on life.
Initially, someone's personal delusion becomes general, and then the general delusion becomes personal. So the building grows, to which everyone puts his hand so that the most distant witness of the event is better informed than the immediate one, and the last person who learns about it is much more convinced than the first.
The first sign of the deterioration of public morals is the disappearance of truth, for truthfulness is the basis of all virtue and is the first requirement for the ruler of the state.
The fruits of unrest never go to the one who caused it, he only stirred up and muddied the water, and others will be catching fish.
As we are deprived of natural pleasures, we replace them with artificial pleasures.
Just as our birth brought for us the birth of everything around us, so our death will be the death of everything around us.
Just as plants wither from an excessive abundance of moisture, and lamps from an abundance of oil, so the human mind, with excessive studies and an abundance of knowledge, cluttered and overwhelmed by their endless variety, loses the ability to make sense of this heap and, under the burden of an unbearable load, bends and fades.
Dig deep inside each of us, and he will find that his deepest desires and hopes spring up and are nourished for the most part at the expense of someone else.
Complete agreement is a very boring property for conversation.
After those who occupy the highest positions, I do not know more unfortunate than those who envy them.
The respect with which the servants surround the child, as well as his awareness of the wealth and greatness of his kind, are no small obstacles to the correct upbringing of children.
The habit of patient work is the same as the habit of patiently enduring pain.
Admitting ignorance is one of the best and surest proofs of the existence of reason.
Nature is a pleasant mentor, and not so much pleasant as careful and faithful.
Both dominion and surface are repugnant to me.
Let anyone who can beware of falling into the hands of a judge, when that judge is a victorious and heavily armed enemy.
Let childhood look forward, old age look back: isn't that what the two faces of Janus meant?
Let the mentor make the student, as it were, sift through a sieve everything that he presents to him, and let him not hammer anything into his head, relying on his authority and influence.
Bees fly from flower to flower in order to collect nectar, which they completely turn into honey. In the same way, what a person borrows from others will be transformed and refined by himself to become his own creation, that is, his own judgment.
Our inquisitiveness has no end: the end in the other world.
Why do doctors so eagerly win the trust of their patient, not sparing themselves with false promises to improve his health, if not so that his imagination will come to the aid of their swindling prescriptions?
Does the swindle make it any less vile that it is a question of a few sous and not a few ecu? It's disgusting in and of itself.
A reasonable person sets limits for himself even in good deeds.
Whatever we get acquainted with, whatever we enjoy, we always feel that it does not satisfy us, and eagerly strive for the future, for the unknown, since the present cannot saturate us, not because there is nothing in it that can to satiate us, but because the very ways of saturating us are unhealthy and disorderly.
The deepest friendship breeds the most bitter enmity.
The most important thing is to instill a taste and love for science, otherwise we will bring up just donkeys loaded with book wisdom.
The most painful and difficult thing in the world is worthy to reign. It is difficult to observe the measure in such immeasurable power.
The most valuable fruit of health is the ability to have fun.
You should look not so much at what you eat as at who you eat with.
Death should be the same as life, we do not become different just because we die.
The death of one is the beginning of the life of another.
Socrates made the students speak first, and then he spoke himself.
The ability to go down to the child's impulses and to guide them is inherent only in a sublime and strong soul.
So many names, so many victories and conquests, buried in the dust of oblivion, make ridiculous our hope to perpetuate our name in history by capturing some chicken coop that only became known after its fall.
Fear is a truly amazing passion, and doctors say that there is no other that would unsettle our minds to a greater extent than this.
Fear either gives wings to the legs, or chains them to the ground.
Modesty adorns the young man and sullies the old man.
Fate brings us neither evil nor good, it supplies only the raw matter of both and the seed capable of fertilizing this matter.
Fate supplies us with only the raw material, and it is up to us to shape it ourselves.
The judge who sentenced the accused in a fit of rage deserves the death sentence himself.
Happiness lies only in those paths that everyone walks on.
Those who blame people for their constant attraction to the future and teach them to seize on the blessings bestowed on us by the present and think of nothing else - for the future is even less in our power than even the past - affect one of the most common human delusions, if only it can be called a delusion what it pushes us to continue doing its work, nature itself, concerned more so that we are active than that we possess the truth, she instills in us, among many others, this deceptive dream .
Those who undermine the state system are most often the first to perish when it collapses.
Those who have the same evil will, whatever the difference in their position, are fraught with the same cruelty, dishonesty, predatory inclinations, and all this in each of them is all the more disgusting, the more cowardly he is, the more confident in himself and the more cunning he knows how. hide behind laws.
It is not enough for those who command and rule over us, who hold in their hands the destinies of the world, to have the understanding of an average person, to be able to do as much as we can, and if they do not surpass us sufficiently, then they are already far below our level.
Only fools can be unshakable in their confidence.
For those who have not comprehended the science of good, any other science brings only harm.
The one who always wins is not a real player.
Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
A high position has the advantage that you can part with it at will, and almost always there is the possibility of choosing a higher or lower step: after all, you do not necessarily fall from any height, much more often you can safely descend.
Animals have that noble feature that a lion never becomes, out of cowardice, the slave of another lion, and a horse the slave of another horse.
The mind that has no definite purpose is lost; to be everywhere is to be nowhere.
Learning, as such, is in itself something impersonal. For a noble soul, it can be a very useful addition, for some other - harmful, and Philosophers do not argue about anything so passionately and so fiercely as about what the highest good of man consists, according to Varro's calculations, there were two hundred and eighty-eight schools. who dealt with this issue <...> Some say that our highest good consists in virtue, others - that in pleasure, others - in following nature, who finds it in science, who - in the absence of suffering, and who don't give a damn...
Philosophy does not in the least take up arms against natural passions, as long as they know the measure, and it preaches moderation in them, and not flight from them.
Although the knowledge of others may teach us something, one is wise only by one's own wisdom.
More often than not, we rejoice more in the childish pranks, games and antics of our children than in their fully conscious actions in adulthood, as if we loved them for our entertainment, like monkeys, and not as people.
Man is an amazingly vain, truly incomprehensible and eternally vacillating being.
A person suffers not so much from what happens, but from how he evaluates what happens to him.
The more our soul is filled, the more spacious it becomes.
Excessively strong grief completely suppresses our soul, restricting the freedom of its manifestations.
As for drunkenness, this vice is through and through bodily and material. Therefore, the most rude of all the peoples now existing is the one in which this vice is especially widespread. Other vices dull the mind, but drunkenness destroys it and infects the body.
As for death, we cannot feel it, we comprehend it only by reason, for it is separated from life by no more than an instant.
In order to correctly judge things sublime and great, one must have the same soul, otherwise we will attribute our own flaws to them.
The noise of weapons drowns out the voice of laws.
I prefer to forge my own soul rather than decorate it with borrowed goods.
I consider myself an average person, except for the fact that I consider myself an average person.

We recommend interesting articles Section Aphorisms of famous people:

▪ Washington Irving. Aphorisms

▪ Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich. Aphorisms

▪ Franz Joseph Haydn. Aphorisms

▪ Random five aphorisms

See other articles Section Aphorisms of famous people.

Read and write useful comments on this article.

<< Back

Latest news of science and technology, new electronics:

The existence of an entropy rule for quantum entanglement has been proven 09.05.2024

Quantum mechanics continues to amaze us with its mysterious phenomena and unexpected discoveries. Recently, Bartosz Regula from the RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing and Ludovico Lamy from the University of Amsterdam presented a new discovery that concerns quantum entanglement and its relation to entropy. Quantum entanglement plays an important role in modern quantum information science and technology. However, the complexity of its structure makes understanding and managing it challenging. Regulus and Lamy's discovery shows that quantum entanglement follows an entropy rule similar to that for classical systems. This discovery opens new perspectives in the field of quantum information science and technology, deepening our understanding of quantum entanglement and its connection to thermodynamics. The results of the study indicate the possibility of reversibility of entanglement transformations, which could greatly simplify their use in various quantum technologies. Opening a new rule ... >>

Mini air conditioner Sony Reon Pocket 5 09.05.2024

Summer is a time for relaxation and travel, but often the heat can turn this time into an unbearable torment. Meet a new product from Sony - the Reon Pocket 5 mini-air conditioner, which promises to make summer more comfortable for its users. Sony has introduced a unique device - the Reon Pocket 5 mini-conditioner, which provides body cooling on hot days. With it, users can enjoy coolness anytime, anywhere by simply wearing it around their neck. This mini air conditioner is equipped with automatic adjustment of operating modes, as well as temperature and humidity sensors. Thanks to innovative technologies, Reon Pocket 5 adjusts its operation depending on the user's activity and environmental conditions. Users can easily adjust the temperature using a dedicated mobile app connected via Bluetooth. Additionally, specially designed T-shirts and shorts are available for convenience, to which a mini air conditioner can be attached. The device can oh ... >>

Energy from space for Starship 08.05.2024

Producing solar energy in space is becoming more feasible with the advent of new technologies and the development of space programs. The head of the startup Virtus Solis shared his vision of using SpaceX's Starship to create orbital power plants capable of powering the Earth. Startup Virtus Solis has unveiled an ambitious project to create orbital power plants using SpaceX's Starship. This idea could significantly change the field of solar energy production, making it more accessible and cheaper. The core of the startup's plan is to reduce the cost of launching satellites into space using Starship. This technological breakthrough is expected to make solar energy production in space more competitive with traditional energy sources. Virtual Solis plans to build large photovoltaic panels in orbit, using Starship to deliver the necessary equipment. However, one of the key challenges ... >>

Random news from the Archive

Robot grower 17.03.2015

Despite the highest level of agricultural development in Western and Southern Europe, capable of feeding almost the whole world, few people want to work on the land. The average age of farmers is growing, and in order to attract young people, you have to go to tricks. For example, to equip the farm with all sorts of smart gizmos. That is why the international team of the "VineRobot" project, led by engineers from the Polytechnic Institute of Valencia, decided to create an electronic assistant to the winegrower.

This assistant will not reap the harvest, depriving the work of the laborers who come to the European fields from different countries to suffer. He will constantly run in the rows between the vines and check the condition of the plants. The farmer will receive all the data on his central computer and will be able to water in time, treat with pesticides, and then harvest on the most suitable day for this. The electronic assistant will not pinch off the grapes "for testing" - it is assumed that he will determine the ripeness of the berries without touching them at all.

During the first year of work, we managed to come up with some sensors and assemble a mobile platform capable of independently moving along narrow rows located on slopes, overcoming weed thickets. Installation of a stereo camera, side vision cameras and sensors is planned for 2015, as well as working out techniques for safe movement of the robot for others - its size is not small.

Other interesting news:

▪ Sleep doubles memory efficiency

▪ New HP Data Center Solutions

▪ DAP-04 - 4-channel DALI to PWM converter

▪ Quantum dots have reduced the size of terahertz devices

▪ Growing potatoes on Mars

News feed of science and technology, new electronics

Interesting materials of the Free Technical Library:

▪ site section Preamplifiers. Article selection

▪ article Without dogma. Popular expression

▪ article How did the numbers come about? Detailed answer

▪ article Sowing rice. Legends, cultivation, methods of application

▪ article Optical buses and connectors for cars. Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering

▪ article Turning a suitcase into a table. Focus Secret

Leave your comment on this article:

All languages of this page

Home page | Library | Articles | Website map | Site Reviews