The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09.

The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09.

They fancy that to think of one’s self is to be delighted with one’s self; to frequent and converse with one’s self, to be overindulgent; but this excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one’s self with one’s self, and the building one’s self up a mere building of castles in the air; who look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger.  If any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot.  If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them.  No particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the nothingness of human condition to make up the weight.  Because Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, “to know himself,” and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage.  Whosoever shall so know himself, let him boldly speak it out.

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     Addresses his voyage to no certain, port
     All apprentices when we come to it (death)
     Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death
     Business to-morrow
     Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk
     Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves
     Curiosity and of that eager passion for news
     Delivered into our own custody the keys of life
     Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one’s nature
     I can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any virtue
     “I wish you good health.”  “No health to thee,” replied the other
     If to philosophise be, as ’tis defined, to doubt
     Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair
     It’s madness to nourish infirmity
     Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man
     Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting. 
     Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger
     Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence
     Much difference betwixt us and ourselves
     No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children
     No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness
     Not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity
     One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out
     Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life
     Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age

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The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.