"Montaigne" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reason and conscience, shifting the onus of responsibility on to others, and agreeing to believe, as it were, by proxy. She had plunged fearlessly and headlong into Aristotle, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Mably, Leibnitz, Bossuet, Pascal, Montaigne, Montesquieu; beginning to call many things in question, and, through the darkness and confusion into which she was sometimes thrown, trying honestly and sincerely to feel her way to some more glorious ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... better; we love them because they are what they are, and we are what we are; we love them, in fact, for the beautiful reason which the author of that noble book—a book not in our present list, by the way, because of something obstinately tough and tedious in him—I mean Montaigne's Essays—loved his ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... discontented: for these poor rich-men, we Anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy. No, no, Sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions, and as the learned and ingenuous Montaigne says, like himself, freely, " When my Cat and I entertain each other with mutual apish tricks, as playing with a garter, who knows but that I make my Cat more sport than she makes me? Shall I conclude her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... (i.e., 'dollar' and 'dolour,' the 'eye of green,' etc.). 2. When were watches first used in Europe? 3. Tell the story of AEneas and Dido. 4. What myth is alluded to in 'his word is more than the miraculous harp'? 5. Gonzalo's Commonwealth—its origin from Montaigne. It is commonly supposed that Shakespeare must have borrowed this reference from the translation. He may have taken it directly from the French. 6. Show the bearing of Sebastian's phrase, 'I am standing water,' with its context. (That is, at the turn of the tide between ebb ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... had long perceived, and was the principal reason of her selecting so weak a woman as her companion; though, at the same time, in justice to her Ladyship's heart as well as head, she had that partiality for her friend for which no other reason can be assigned than that given by Montaigne: "Je l'amais parceque ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... opened was but vaguely understood at the time. The thinkers and men of science were living in an intellectual twilight. It was the twilight of dawn. At one extremity we have mysticism which culminated in the speculations of Bruno and Campanella; at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez. The bewildered condition of knowledge is indicated by the fact that while Bruno and Campanella accepted the Copernican astronomy, it was rejected by one who in many other respects may claim to be reckoned as a modern—I mean ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... innocence, wherein a man's happiness was not to depend upon the caprice of another. It was not till after he had made a faux pas, that he had his female mate. Many such transformations of individuals have been well attested; particularly one by Montaigne, and another by the late Bishop of Salisbury. From all which it appears, that this system of male and female has already undergone and may hereafter suffer, several alterations. Every smatterer in anatomy knows, that a woman is but an introverted ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... originating power does not go with assimilating power. Few thinkers on his level display such breadth of literary reference. Unlike Wordsworth, who was content with a few tattered volumes on a kitchen shelf, Emerson worked among books. When he was a boy he found a volume of Montaigne, and he never forgot the delight and wonder in which he lived with it. His library is described as filled with well-selected authors, with curious works from the eastern world, with many editions in both ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Lucrece, and the early sonnets, he had studied, like every one else, the models for sonneteers and lyrists which came from Italy and France, from Petrarch or Du Bellay. It is clear that he was familiar with the Essays of Montaigne. Earlier English literature was no sealed book to him. He also read his own contemporaries. Hence his Lucrece is part Ovid, part Chaucer, part Daniel or Watson; his Venus and Adonis ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... capital, and vulgarity was the badge of all their tribe. He had attempted to read; a woman had told him to read French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation of the life which, for years, he had practically been leading. An accident made him acquainted with Rabelais and Montaigne; and he had relished them, for he had a fine sense of humour. He might have pursued these studies, and perhaps have found in them a slight and occasional distraction, but a clever man he met at a guingette at Passy, whither he had gone to try to ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... outrageous upholders of the royal prerogative and the irresponsible power of the sovereign, Montagu and Mainwaring, had been presented, the one to the see of Chichester, the other—the impeached and condemned of the Commons—to the rich living Montagu's consecration had vacated. Montaigne, the licenser of Mainwaring's incriminated sermon, was raised to the Archbishopric of York, while Neile and Laud, who were openly named in the Remonstrance as the "troublers of the English Israel," were rewarded ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... crooked courses, are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice, that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... would rather have chosen that thou hadst labored a twelvemonth longer; but now, as I said, hath come a chance to prove thyself that may never come again. Sir James tells me that thou art passably ripe in skill. Thou must now show whether that be so or no. Hast thou ever heard of the Sieur de la Montaigne?" ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... affair of the sensuous imagination; it brought with it the conception of Roman virtue, and this might well unite itself (as we see afterwards in Corneille) with Christian faith. Among the many translators of the sixteenth century was Montaigne's early friend—the friend in memory of all his life—ETIENNE DE LA BOETIE (1530-63). It is not, however, for his fragments of Plutarch or his graceful rendering of Xenophon's Economics (named by him the Mesnagerie) that we remember La Boetie; it is rather for his eloquent pleading on behalf ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... action while holding the other kind in check. The earthward and the heavenward are in each of us, striving for mastery; but no imagination is vainer than that we can indulge both, or practise the impartiality with which Montaigne's singular devotee lighted one candle {152} to St. George and another to the dragon. If we would realise the type of perfect in the mind, we must not gratify "the penchant for revolt," but ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... York Jan. 20th, 1777. She says Bridewell, the College, the New Jail, the Baptist Meeting House, and the tavern lately occupied by Mr. De la Montaigne and several other houses are filled with sick and wounded of the enemy. General Lee was under guard in a small mean house at the foot of King Street. Wm. Slade says 800 prisoners taken at Fort Washington were ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Poissac is not far from Tours. An ugly name, isn't it? But to me it is very beautiful. The house has orchards all round it, and yellow roses with flushed centers poke themselves in my window, and there is a little tower like Montaigne's." ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... exertion, to make it keen and flexible." But the best way to encompass this is to feed the mind on ideas, and ideas are not produced every day, nor for that matter every year, and luckily all ideas have not the same value. There are the ideas of Taine, of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Descartes, of Montaigne, of Ficino, of Petrarch, of Dante, of Cicero, of Aristotle, of Plato; and in a moment I have run the gamut of all the centuries of our Western civilization. Who will tell me which ideas we shall need most tomorrow? Evidently, we cannot know them ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording more frequently ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... hypnotic trance; but it is well known that persons may easily train themselves to hold out the arms for any length of time without increasing the respiration by one breath or raising the pulse rate at all. We all remember Montaigne's famous illustration in which he said that if a woman began by carrying a calf about every day she would still be able to carry it when ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed, his praises never.—MONTAIGNE. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... characteristic of the book, and something quite different appears. It is that same peculiarity which appears in places and persons and things so different as Spenser, as the poetry of the Pleiade, as Montaigne, as Raleigh, as Donne, as the group of singers known as the Caroline poets. It is a peculiarity which has shown itself in different forms at different times, but never in such vigour and precision as at this time. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... religion, to which, if we believe Polybius, we must ascribe a real influence in the maintenance of morality, was at the same time undermined by the sceptical philosophy of Greece, and by contact with conflicting religions, the spectacle of which had its effect in producing the scepticism of Montaigne. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt at the headstrong passions of Benevenuto Cellini, and the gay follies of Colley Cibber. The confessions of St. Austin and Rousseau disclose the secrets of the human heart; the commentaries ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... to Mr. Fraser to send me Magazine, and I have now received four numbers of the Sartor Resartus, for whose light thanks evermore. I am glad that one living scholar is self-centred, and will be true to himself though none ever were before; who, as Montaigne says, "puts his ear close by himself, and holds his breath and listens." And none can be offended with the self-subsistency of one so catholic and jocund. And 't is good to have a new eye inspect our mouldy social forms, our politics, and schools, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Montaigne said, "I always feel a pleasure in paying my debts, because I discharge my shoulders of a wearisome load and of an image of slavery." Johnson might well call Economy the mother of Liberty. No man can be free who is in debt. The inevitable ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... companions. "I am well satisfied to be a substance that thinks and reads," she says, finding her good uncle a trifle dull for a compagnon de voyage. Her tastes were catholic. She read Astree with delight, loved Petrarch, Ariosto, and Montaigne; Rabelais made her "die of laughter," she found Plutarch admirable, enjoyed Tacitus as keenly as did Mme. Roland a century later, read Josephus and Lucian, dipped into the history of the crusades and of the iconoclasts, of the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... repeatedly discussed at the public clubs, notably at one in the Rue Pierre Levee, where Louise Michel, the schoolmistress who subsequently participated in the Commune and was transported to New Caledonia, officiated as high-priestess; and at another located at the Triat Gymnasium in the Avenue Montaigne, where as a rule no men were allowed to be present, that is, excepting a certain Citizen Jules Allix, an eccentric elderly survivor of the Republic of '48, at which period he had devised a system of telepathy effected by ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... curious game of chess life is! Here's a simple play made complicated. How serenely I moved toward the coveted checkmate, to find a castle towering in the way! I came in here to await young Montaigne. He fails to appear. Chance brings others here, and lo! it becomes a new game. And D'Herouville will be out of hospital to-morrow or next day. Quebec promises to become as lively as Paris. Diane, he called her. What is her object in concealing her name? By all the gargoyles ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and perfect fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and Montaigne, his own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers among his readers. 'To be the most beloved of English writers—what a title that is for a man!' says Thackeray of Goldsmith. In such matters, a ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... temperament. Jean was by nature the "good boy," tractable and docile; Feli, the unmanageable, the lawless, the violent. While Jean was dutifully learning his lessons to order, Feli, the obstreperous, imprisoned in the library, was feeding his tender mind with Diderot, Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, and similar diet, and at twelve exhibited such infidel tendencies as made it prudent to defer his first Communion ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... gravitation is. If we would stop and attribute too much to genius, he shows us that "what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no one man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse." If we would find in his essay on Montaigne, a biography, we are shown a biography of scepticism—and in reducing this to relation between "sensation and the morals" we are shown a true Montaigne—we know the man better perhaps by this less presentation. If we would stop and trust heavily on the harvest of originality, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Montaigne, in one of his essays, says that to stop gracefully is sure proof of high race in a horse: certainly to stop in time is imperative upon the poet. Of Browning may be said what Poe wrote of another, that his genius was ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain"—that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"—that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... books—that is, by the reflections that they suggest; fourth, last and lowest, what we have learned in books or with masters. The virtue of an aphorism comes under the third of these heads: it conveys a portion of a truth with such point as to set us thinking on what remains. Montaigne, who delighted in Plutarch, and kept him ever on his table, praises him in that besides his long discourses, "there are a thousand others, which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and contents himself ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Walton alludes to his friendship with a much younger and gayer man than himself, Charles Cotton (born 1630), the friend of Colonel Richard Lovelace, and of Sir John Suckling: the translator of Scarron's travesty of Virgil, and of Montaigne's Essays. Cotton was a roisterer, a man at one time deep in debt, but he was a Royalist, a scholar, and an angler. The friendship between him and Walton is creditable to the freshness of the old man and to the kindness of the younger, ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... prolonged sorrow necessarily light: "Quod autem magnum dolorem brevem longinquum levem esse dicitis, id non intelligo quale sit, video enim et magnos et eosdem bene longinquos dolores." But the sentiment is adopted by Montaigne (1. xiv.), ed. 1580, p. 66: "Tu ne la sentiras guiere long temps, si tu la sens trop; elle mettra fin a soy ou a toy; l'un et l'autre revient a un." ("Si tu ne la portes; elle t'emportera," note.) And again ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... designation of the following anecdote confirms its authenticity, which however required no other indication than the characteristic humour of Addison in his odd conception of old Montaigne. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... aft, weel neukit by my lane, Wi' Horace, or perhaps Montaigne, The mornin' hours hae come an' gane Abuene my heid— I wadna gi'en a chucky-stane ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unbroken line as far as the Nona tower at the Bridge of Sant' Angelo, and completely cutting off the view. It was the best of the Roman inns, even when Rome had more hostelries than any city in Europe. Philippe de Commines lodged there, and Montaigne, and many another famous man who visited Rome before ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... kind of spell indicated was practised by Hera upon Alcmena, before the birth of Heracles. Analogous is the spell by binding witch-knots, practised by Simaetha on her lover, in the second Idyll of Theocritus. Montaigne has some curious remarks on these enchantments, explaining their power by what is now called "suggestion." There is a Danish parallel to ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... quill for essays that are literature. There is a subtle informality, a delightful easiness, perhaps even a faint immorality essentially literary, about the quill. The quill is rich in suggestion and quotation. There are quills that would quote you Montaigne and Horace in the hands of a trades-union delegate. And those quirky, idle noises this pen makes are delightful, and would break your easy fluency with wit. All the classical essayists wrote with a quill, and ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... had been close enough to demonstrate that beyond a doubt that planet has no moon or satellite such as Cassini, Short, Montaigne of Limoges, Montbarron, and some other astronomers have imagined to exist. "Had there been such a satellite," said Servadac, "we might have captured it in passing. But what can be the meaning," he added seriously, "of all this displacement of the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Well, some things I did secretly. Ye shall hear of them. I read where I might, and after my taste, many plays, and found in them beauty and the soul of deep things. Tales I have read, but a few, and John Milton, and Chaucer, and Bacon, and Montaigne, and Arab poets also, whose books my uncle sent me. Was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gathering experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked color and ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;—these quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne; these stripes of crimson fire, of Shakespeare; this sober gold, of Sir Thomas Browne; this purpling bloom, of Lamb;—in such fruits we taste the legendary gardens of Alcinoues and the orchards of Atlas; and there are volumes again which can claim only the inglorious senility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Montaigne says: "We must see and get acquainted with our sins if we expect to correct them." Virtue presupposes trials just as much as victory implies warfare. The triumph of virtue is to defeat morbid or excessive passion, for virtue is only realized when it is a conquering force. Innocence is passive but ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... The value of Oceana and The Bow of Ulysses is altogether different. They are the characteristic reflections of an intensely vivid, highly cultivated mind, bringing out of its treasure-house things new and old. "The King knows your book," it was said to Montaigne, "and would like to know you." "If the King knows my book," replied the philosopher, "he knows me." Froude is in his books, especially in his books of travel, for in them, more than anywhere else, he thinks aloud. There are strange people in the world. One of them criticised ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... list of authors to whom Dr. Ferriar holds Sterne to have been more or less indebted: Rabelais, Beroalde de Verville, Bouchet, Bruscambille, Scarron, Swift, an author of the name or pseudonym of "Gabriel John," Burton, Bacon, Blount, Montaigne, Bishop Hall. The catalogue is a reasonably long one; but it is not, of course, to be supposed that Sterne helped himself equally freely from every author named in it. His obligations to some of them are, as Dr. Ferriar admits, but slight. From Rabelais, besides his vagaries ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... correspondence so unreserved, the duty of suppression and selection must needs be delicate. Belonging to the race of Scott and Dumas, of the romantic narrators and creators, Stevenson belonged no less to that of Montaigne and the literary egotists.... He was a watchful and ever interested observer of the motions of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... somewhere?" he asked. "That if man endures for a million years, he'll never lack obstacles to give him trouble, or the pressure of need to make him conquer them. Then there's Montaigne—you ought to read Montaigne—wisest of men. He'll tell you that human wisdom has never reached the perfection of conduct that itself prescribes; and could it arrive there, it would still dictate to itself others beyond. In a word, the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;—now a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are "neat as imported." The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... books in vain—nothing could I find that was suitable for either children or parents. So I was, very reluctantly, about to abandon the enterprise, when it chanced that, being unable to compose myself to sleep, a few nights since, I took up, according to my custom on such occasions, an old copy of Montaigne, the usual companion of my vigils, the fellow-occupant of my pillow, and the only moralist whose musings one can read with pleasure on the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... convicted, and if convicted perfectly certain to be punished with savage ferocity. The judge would probably think he was showing impartiality by punishing him for his qualities of charm and high intelligence. For the first time in my life I understood the full significance of Montaigne's confession that if he were accused of stealing the towers of Notre Dame, he would fly the kingdom rather than risk a trial, and Montaigne was a lawyer. I set to work at once to complete ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... sentiments. What those are to which Hauterive alludes, I know not, having never seen a newspaper since I left Philadelphia (except those of Richmond), and no circumstances authorize him to expect that I should inquire into them, or answer him. I think it is Montaigne who has said, that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. I am sure it is true as to every thing political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to every thing of that character. I indulge myself on one political topic only, that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to produce new fiction at a still lower price. Besides novels he published solid works of biography at thirty-one and six, art books at a guinea, travel books at fifteen shillings, flighty historical works at twelve-and-sixpence, and cheap editions of Montaigne's Essays and "Robinson Crusoe" at a shilling. Some idea of his business methods may be derived from the fact that it pleased him to reflect that all the other publishers were producing exactly the same books as he was. And though he would admit that the trade had been ruined by competition ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... chilling than Machiavelli, more detached than Montaigne. But Erasmus will not have it credited to him: it is Folly who speaks. He purposely makes us tread the round of the circulus vitiosus, as in the old saw: A Cretan said, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... says:—'For who could imagine that Dr. Clarke valued himself for his agility, and frequently amused himself in a private room of his house in leaping over the tables and chairs.' Warton's Essay on Pope, ii. 125. 'It is a good remark of Montaigne's,' wrote Goldsmith, 'that the wisest men often have friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 166. Mr. Seward says in his Anecdotes, ii. 320, that 'in the opinion of Dr. Johnson' Dr. Clarke was the most complete literary character ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... under the patronage of the earl of Southampton, to whom the sonnet is addressed, and that he can identify the four personifications! Shakespeare of course is the Dumb taught to sing by the favor of the earl; resolute John Florio, the translator of Montaigne, is Heavy Ignorance; Tom Nash is the Learned, who has had feathers added to his wing; and Marlowe is the Grace to whom is given a double majesty! Marlowe's chief characteristic was majesty, says Mr. Massey; therefore, we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaigne's, that the wisest men often hare friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of my regard. Poetry is a much easier and more agreeable species of composition than prose; and could a man live ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... least was an assurance privately given him by Miss Barrace. "Oh your friend's a type, the grand old American—what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father and who was usually the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court. I haven't seen one these ever so many years; the sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this specimen is wonderful; in the right ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... long in the breeding season that his little wings can hardly lift it above the ground, and he flutters about in the breeze like a badly made kite. Riding back at sunset over the flat I felt like Montaigne when he desired to wear away his life in the saddle. The difference is that in the end I may have to eat my own horse. The shells from four guns kept singing their evening hymn above my ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... sane and conscious, and his sanity intensified the horror of his situation, "enabling him to gauge with fearful accuracy the depths of the abyss into which he had fallen." One glimpse of him is given to us by Montaigne, who visited the cell, where it seems the unfortunate inmate was made a show of to all whom curiosity or pity attracted to the hospital. "I had even more indignation than compassion when I saw him at Ferrara in so piteous a state—a living shadow of himself." ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... that had been already discovered and named by the English, giving to Cape Patton (of Grant) the title of Cape Suffrein, Cape Albany Otway (of Grant) that of Cape Marengo, and Cape Schanck (of Grant) that of Cape Richelieu. Portland Bay, also named by Grant, became Tourville Bay; Montaigne Cape took the place-name of Cape Solicitor; Lady Julia Island became Fourcroy Island; Lawrence's Island, Dragon Island; and Cape Bridgewater, Cape Montesquieu. In this manner nearly the whole of Grant's discoveries were ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... what doctors I apply— Sworn to no master, of no sect am I. As drives the storm, at any door I knock; And house with Montaigne now, and now ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that I know not how to translate it better; for it is a real translation that is needed by this old-fashioned and artless language of the peasants of the country "that I sing," as they used to say. These people speak French that is too true for us, and since Rabelais and Montaigne, the advance of the language has lost for us many of its old riches. Thus it is with every advance, and we must make the best of it. Yet it is a pleasure still to hear those picturesque idioms used in the old districts in the center of France; all the more because ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Fontainebleau, whither the Emperor used to make journeys in imitation of the old Court of France. During these excursions he sometimes partook of the pleasures of the chase, but merely for the sake of reviving an old custom, for in that exercise he found as little amusement as Montaigne did in the game ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that I read lately a lament that Dr. Holmes had not written "a great novel"—a task which would have been as unsuitable to him as to Dr. Johnson or to Montaigne. It is not a question of a greater or less talent, but of a wholly different talent—as distinct as metaphysics and portrait-painting. The same critic complains because Holmes has not been "in earnest" like Carlyle. While the genius of that great writer ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Montaigne in one of his essays* mentions the high excellence Italian cookery had attained in his day. "I have entered into this Discourse upon the Occasion of an Italian I lately receiv'd into my Service, and who was Clerk of the Kitchen ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... in Burton, Montaigne, Byron, and other writers, and based upon an old folk-belief that the cubs are born a formless lump which the mother-bear has to "lick into shape." The same idea gave rise to the "ours mal leche" of French, and our own colloquial ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's[421] translation, Montaigne's[422] account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some consequence. Wherever he goes, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my frequent practice to visit places of resort in this town where I am least known, to observe what reception my works meet with in the world, and what good effects I may promise myself from my labours, and it being a privilege asserted by Monsieur Montaigne, and others, of vain-glorious memory, that we writers of essays may talk of ourselves, I take the liberty to give an account of the remarks which I find are made by some of my gentle readers upon these ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... word directly to Orde, up river; but left him to be informed by the slow process of filtration through the bookkeepers. The interim of several hours before Heinzman appeared he spent very comfortably in his easy chair, dipping into a small volume of Montaigne. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Eusebius, when you publish it in Maga, as you did my last, folk will say—"Why, what is all this about? Horae Catullianae! It is no such thing." Be it, then, I say, what you will. Do you think I am writing an essay?—no, a letter; and I may, if I please, entitle it, as Montaigne did—"On coach horses," and still make it what I please. It shall be a novel, if they please, for that is what they look for now: so let the Curate be the hero,—and the heroine—but must it be a love story? Then I won't forestall the interest, so wait to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Mauritius (River of Prince Maurice). Wassenaer (1624) speaks of the river as "called first Rio de Montagnes, now the River Mauritius." De Laet, in Nieuwe Wereldt (1625), gives "Manhattes River" and "Rio de Montaigne," but says that "the Great River" is the usual designation. In his Latin version of 1633, and French of 1640, he adds a mention of the name Nassau River. As Dr. Johannes la Montagne did not come to New Netherland till 1637, the derivation here given can not hold. River ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... death: "Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his Nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them." Have we forgotten Montaigne's votive offerings at ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of no such thing, sir. I got them out of my favourite Democritus Junior—out of old Burton, who has provided many indifferent scholars with learning;" and who and Montaigne, were favourite authors ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure"; but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such. And I will venture, at the risk of inditing a list of old primers and grammars, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "The world," says Montaigne, "is incapable of curing itself. It is so impatient of what burthens it, that it thinks only of how it shall rid itself of it, without inquiring at what price. A thousand examples show us that it cures itself ordinarily at its own cost. The getting rid of the present evil ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political dissension was Mr. Stevenson's point of departure on his Travels with a Donkey. Monsieur Duchemin made it his as well; and on the fourth morning of his hegira from England set out from Le Monastier afoot, a volume of Montaigne in his pocket, a stout stick in his fist—the fat rucksack strapped to his shoulders enabling this latter-day traveller to dispense with the society ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... favour. We ought to be carefully on our guard against a ruse de guerre, of which no one till then had ever thought,—that is, against cocks, wild boars, &c.,—for through them an army might suddenly be deprived of its commander-in-chief. "It would also be requisite not to entrust command," Montaigne says, "to men who would fly from apples more ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Apollo Belvedere. On the mantelpiece, by a frog smoking a red pipe, a paper fan on which was painted the Bayreuth Theater. On the two bookshelves were a few books—Luebke, Mommsen, Schiller, "Sans Famille," Jules Verne, Montaigne. On the walls large photographs of the Sistine Madonna, and pictures by Herkomer, edged with blue and green ribbons. There was also a view of a Swiss hotel in a frame of silver thistles; and above all, everywhere ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... thought that underlies them were not the products of time and accident. Milton was an idealist, pure and simple, in politics. Had he lived under the Tudor sovereigns, he would have been reduced, with Sir Thomas More, Montaigne, and John Barclay, the author of Argenis, to express himself by way of romance and allegory. It was his fortune to live at a time when the Tudor state system was breaking up with appalling suddenness, and along with it the Tudor compromise in the affairs of the Church, imposed from above ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... full of ferns, Shakspeare, of rough sketches of the men and women whom he has made immortal. Saintly Herbert lay side by side with Saint Augustine's confessions. Milton and Montaigne stood socially together, and Andersen's lovely "Mrchen" fluttered its pictured leaves in the middle of an open Plato; while several books in unknown tongues were half-hidden by volumes ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... a significant fact that Sainte-Beuve opened the campaign of romanticism in "Le Globe" with a "Tableau de la poesie francaise au seizieme siecle," the century of the "Pleiade," and of Rabelais and Montaigne. It is a still more significant fact that the members of the "Cenacle," the circle of kindred minds that gathered around Victor Hugo—Alfred de Vigny, Emile Deschamps, Sainte-Beuve, David d'Angers, and others—"studied ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... under the frowns of AEsculapius. Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened hope. When all is said, nothing is said; and Montaigne's Que scais-je, besides being briefer and wittier, was ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... gift, being in all great masters one and the same thing,—in lawyers, nothing technical, but always some piece of common sense, alike interesting to laymen as to clerks. Lord Mansfield's merit is the merit of common sense. It is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Montaigne, Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Franklin. Its application to law seems quite accidental. Each of Mansfield's famous decisions contains a level sentence or two, which hit the mark. His sentences are not always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Olivetanus in his admirable version laid the foundation upon which all the later and more accurate translations have been reared, by the excellence of his modes of expression he exerted an influence upon the French language perhaps not inferior to that of Calvin or Montaigne.[458] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Fruits," "Second Fruits," "Garden of Recreation," and so forth; also, of an excellent Italian and English dictionary, styled "A World of Words,"—the basis of all Anglo-Italian dictionaries since published. He was a good French scholar, as is proved by his translation of Montaigne; and wrote some verses, highly prized by Elizabeth and her successor, James I. Indeed, his general learning and accomplishments recommended him to both courts; and, on the accession of James, he was appointed classical tutor to Prince Henry, and reader of French and Italian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... from De Montaigne the other day," said Ernest, just as they were retiring for the night, "and his letter decides my movements. If you will accept me, then, as a travelling companion, I will go with you to Paris. Have you made up your mind to leave ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these phrases that are meant to seem so humble, really apologising for what was the essential quality of his genius? Montaigne, who (it is Lamb that says it) 'anticipated all the discoveries of succeeding essayists,' affected no humility in the statement of almost exactly the same mental complexion. 'I take the first argument that fortune offers me,' he tells us; 'they are all equally good for me; I never design ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... employing 'effervescence' in a letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voila un mot dont je n'avais jamais oui parler). 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced 'diversion' and 'enfantillage', though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last. Desfontaines was the first who employed 'suicide'; Caron gave to the language ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Double translating. 3. Rabelais. 4. First appearance of realism in instruction. 5. Montaigne. 6. Summary of progress during ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... of the most beautiful of the virtues, but excess is possible and dangerous. As Shakespeare's Florio's Montaigne has it: "We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vitious." In the case of the American composer it is certainly true that we "excessively demeane ourselves in a good action." ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... interest in listening to some of the speakers, and in looking at some of the members. Montaigne pointed out all of the notables. One of the speakers* was a short man, with a corpulent body and a large open face; but he was a born orator of a certain type. Rounded and polished, mellow and musical, his sentences rolled from his mouth in liquid cadence and perfect balance. Sir ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... felt the disadvantage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there are some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remaining unappropriated ideas ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are we to account for the presence of book-plates—quite a pretty collection at times—on the shelves of men who possess no such toys of their own? When I was a girl I had access to a small and well-chosen library (not greatly exceeding Montaigne's fourscore volumes), each book enriched with an appropriate device of scaly dragon guarding the apples of Hesperides. Beneath the dragon was the motto (Johnsonian in form if not in substance), "Honour ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the time of the Reformation the clergy were far more powerful than in England, and the theological contest was much more severe. Toleration began with Henry IV. at the moment when Montaigne appeared as the prophet of scepticism. The death of King Henry was not followed by the reaction which might have been expected, and the rule of Richelieu was emphatically political in its motives and secular in its effects. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... desires, sentiments, and tastes, they become attracted to each other. Or in spite of natural disagreements or differences, through the force of circumstances they become welded together in friendship. Montaigne describes such an attachment, in which the souls mix and work themselves into one piece with so perfect a mixture that there is no more sign of a seam by which they were first conjoined. ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... feel it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, 'Because it was he, because it was I.' There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable power that brought on this union."—MONTAIGNE: On Friendship. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... solitude is essential to our richest culture. Our higher nature demands time for reflection and meditation. But the monks carried this principle to an extreme, and they overestimated its benefits. "Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires," says Montaigne, "do not leave us because we forsake our native country, they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor deserts, nor caves, nor hair shirts, nor fasts, can disengage ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... or stout. Some hold the one, and some the other; But howsoe'er they make a pother, The diff'rence was so small, his brain Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain; Which made some take him for a tool That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool; And offer'd to lay wagers that As Montaigne, playing with his cat, Complains she thought him but an ass, Much more she wou'd Sir Hudibras: For that's the name our valiant knight To all his challenges did write. But they're mistaken very much; 'Tis plain enough he was no ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... acquaintance to found a noble esteem, but politeness prepares the way. Indeed, as Montaigne says, Courtesy begets esteem at sight. Urbanity is half of affability, and affability is a charm ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Peter Anthony Motteux, the writer of this letter, was born in Normandy, and came as a refugee to England at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Here he wrote about 14 plays, translated Bayle's Dictionary, Montaigne's Essays, and Don Quixote, and established himself also as a trader in Leadenhall Street. He had a wife and a fine young family when (at the age of 56, and six years after the date of this letter) he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... place than it now receives. The subject bulks largely in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Cicero. And among modern writers it gets most importance in the writings of the more Pagan-spirited, such as Montaigne. In all the ancient systems of philosophy, friendship was treated as an integral part of the system. To the Stoic it was a blessed occasion for the display of nobility and the native virtues of the human mind. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... undoubtedly find that it is the man behind the book. It is the fashion of the day to attribute all splendid results to genius and culture. But genius and culture are not enough. "All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness," says Montaigne. The quality of simple manhood, and the universal human traits which form the bond of union between man and man,—which form the basis of society, of the family, of government, of friendship,— are quite ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the morning he switched on all the lights, rose out of bed, and walked aimlessly about the chamber. Something, some morbid impulse, prompted him to take up the General Catalogue, which lay next to a priceless copy of the 1603 edition of Florio's 'Montaigne.' There were pages and pages about funerals in the General Catalogue, and forty fine photographic ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Montaigne and "Howel's Letters" are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... what doctors I apply— Sworn to no master, of no sect am I. As drives the storm, at any door I knock; And house with Montaigne now, or now ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... island, however, is clearly not Bermuda, nor, indeed, any known land. Other details have been traced from various sources. Ariel is a name of a spirit in mediaeval literature of cabalistic secrets. Montaigne's Essays, translated by Florio (1603), furnished the hint of Gonzalo's imaginary commonwealth (II, i, 147 ff.). Setebos has been found as a devil-god of the Patagonians in Eden's History of Travaile (1577). The rest of the story, which is nine-tenths of the whole, is probably ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... literature of the Augustan age of France—all this evidently shows, that there was once, at least, to be found in the interior of the kingdom, another and a different state of things. In the essays of Montaigne, the private life of a French gentleman is admirably depicted. His days appear to have been divided between his family, his library, and his estate. A French nobleman lived then happy in the seat of his ancestors. His family grew up around him; and he probably visited the town as rarely ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... there is not a nation, observes the humorous Montaigne, even to the people who when they salute turn their backs on their friends, but that can be justified in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... from city to city, writing Latin verses for his hosts and Italian sonnets in their ladies' albums, buying books and music, and creating, one cannot doubt, an all too flattering impression of an English Protestant. To travel in Italy with Montaigne or Milton, or Evelyn or Gray, or Shelley, or, pathetic as it is, with the dying Sir Walter, is perhaps more instructive than to go there for yourself with a tourist's ticket. Old Montaigne, who was but forty-seven when he made his journey, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... pinned him down to the objective, to the field of vision under his microscope. The table of contents of Representative Men is the dial of his education. It is as follows: Uses of Great Men; Plato, or The Philosopher; Plato, New Readings; Swedenborg, or The Mystic; Montaigne, or The Sceptic; Shakespeare, or The Poet; Napoleon, or The Man of the World; Goethe, or The Writer. The predominance of the writers over all other types of men is not cited to show Emerson's interest in The Writer, for we know his interest ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... Montaigne[7] tells us, that he heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say, "That to keep up the powers of the stomach, that they faint not, it would be very proper to rouze them up once a month by this wholesome excess. And if we believe ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... it. I have come, if possible, to explain myself. To understand is always to forgive. That is a great saying of Montaigne's. If ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... antinomies, or opposite laws of the Code and Pandects, are sometimes the cause, and often the excuse, of the glorious uncertainty of the civil law, which so often affords what Montaigne calls "Questions pour l'Ami." See a fine passage of Franciscus Balduinus in Justinian, (l. ii. p. 259, &c., apud Ludewig, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... a manual of rare or curious, or in any way peculiar books, but as the instruction of a Nestor on the best books for study and use in all departments of literature. Yet one will look in vain there for such names as Montaigne, Shaftesbury, Benjamin Franklin, D'Alembert, Turgot, Adam Smith, Malebranche, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Fenelon, Burke, Kant, Richter, Spinoza, Flechier, and many others. Characteristically enough, if you turn up Rousseau in the index, you will find Jean Baptiste, but ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... themselves by constructing the moat around the palace. Norden tells us that Henry III. often "lay" at the palace, and on two occasions Bishop Bancroft received visits here from Queen Elizabeth. James I. also came here before his coronation. In 1627 Charles I. dined with Bishop Montaigne. In 1642 the Parliamentary army encamped at Fulham, ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... his well-meaning friend, "Think you I have not spent my whole life in preparing for this one thing?" And he handed back the smoothly polished manuscript with a smile. Montaigne says, "Should a suppliant voice have been heard out of the mouth of Socrates now; should that lofty virtue strike sail in the very height of its glory, and his rich and powerful nature be committed to flowing rhetoric ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and militarie Discourses of Lord Michael De Montaigne, Knight Of the noble Order of Saint Michael, and one of the Gentlemen in Ordinary of the French Kings Chamber. The Third Edition. Whereunto is now newly added an Index of the principall matters and personages mentioned in this Booke. London, Printed ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... sometimes entertained myself by trying to imagine the impressions which our modern life would make upon some sensitive mind of a remote age. I have fancied myself rambling about New York with Montaigne, and taking note of his shrewd, satirical comment. I can hardly imagine him expressing any feeling of surprise, much less any sentiment of admiration; but I am confident that under a masque of ironical self-complacency the old Gascon ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... different times had given him a place in the quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of research; at their amiable, unconvivial dinner-parties he was most himself. His favorite author was Montaigne. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... read and seriously weighed the methods by which the famous Montaigne was educated, and resolving in some degree to exceed them, resolved he should speak and learn nothing but the learned languages, and especially the Greek; in which he constantly eat and drank, according to Homer. But what most ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... young painter was breakfasting with Spero, a perfumed note was sent up to his residence in the Rue Montaigne, wherein Jane Zild declared her willingness to appear in the painter's parlors ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. Shakspere makes us ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would hesitate to answer this question directly in the affirmative. History relates a long series of events, and depicts a vast number of characters; and let us recollect, gentlemen, the difficulty of thoroughly understanding a single character or a solitary event. Montaigne, after having passed his life in self-study, was continually making new discoveries on his own nature; he has filled a long work with them, and ends by saying, "Man is a subject so diversified, so uncertain and vain, that it is difficult to pronounce any fixed and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with the usual reaction of his afternoon self against his morning self, felt that wild horses should not take him to Church again, and, with a longing for something purely mundane, he stayed at home with a volume of Montaigne, while apparently all the rest of the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Burke could be on behalf of its opposite, would she, while defending the French Constitution, have made use of such absurd and offensive nonsense as that which this celebrated rhetorician made use of in attacking it? Would not the adopted daughter of Montaigne have better defended the rights of citizens in France, in 1614, than the Councillor Courtin, who was a believer in magic and occult powers? Was not the Princesse des Ursins superior to Chamillard? Could not the Marquise de Chatelet have written equally ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... which is a very old Norman family, and therefore of French extraction, originally wrote their name "de Montaigne," from the name of their estates at Perigord, near Bordeaux, and as stated in the life of one of its members, the well-known Michael Seigneur de Montaigne, the essayist and philosopher, "This race was noble, but noble without any ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... preface to the "Essays," as translated by John Florio. A copy of Florio's "Montaigne" is known to have been in the library of Shakespeare, one of the few extant autographs of the poet being in a copy of this translation now preserved in the library ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... than either of the former maintain, that the character of Dorax is not only unnatural, but inconsistent with itself: let them read the play, and think again; and if yet they are not satisfied, cast their eyes on that chapter of the wise Montaigne, which is intitled, De l'Inconstance des Actions humaines. A longer reply is what those cavillers deserve not; but I will give them and their fellows to understand, that the earl of Dorset was pleased to read the tragedy twice over before it was acted, and did me the favour ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... of this kind, but I shall reserve them till I have grown older; then I will be as garrulous as Montaigne. As it is, I think I hear the reader say—"All this may be very true, but what has it to do with the novel?" Nothing, I grant; but it has a great deal to do with making a book—for I have completed a whole chapter out ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... proportion as he associated himself with the real Marianne, he created a fictitious Marianne, ideal, kind, spirituelle, perhaps ignorant, but subtile and corrupted in mind, who amused and disconcerted him at one and the same time. He had left the Continental Hotel, and rented a house on Avenue Montaigne, Champs-Elysees, where he sometimes entertained Marianne as he might have done a princess. At such times she gossiped while smoking Turkish tobacco. Her Parisian grace, her champagne-like effervescent manner, seduced and charmed ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... monstrous in the eyes of the Empire. But Madame de la Mariniere was obliged to live with her husband's literary admirations, as well as with his political opinions, so Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, with many earlier and healthier geniuses, such as Montaigne, looked down in handsomely gilt bindings from the upper shelves. High up they were: there was a concession. In the lower shelves lived Bousset, and other Catholic writers; the modern spirit in religion being represented by ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... doctrine, the new scientific view of the heavens was developed more and more; the physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the new scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and at the end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of superstition began to wither and droop. Montaigne, Bayle, and Voltaire in France, Thomasius in Germany, Calef in New England, and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to create an intellectual and moral atmosphere ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and true, So fervent Boswell gives him to our view: In every trait we see his mind expand; The master rises by the pupil's hand; We love the writer, praise his happy vein, Grac'd with the naivet of the sage Montaigne. Hence not alone are brighter parts display'd, But e'en the specks of character pourtray'd: We see the Rambler with fastidious smile Mark the lone tree, and note the heath-clad isle; But when th' heroick tale of Flora's[786] charms, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... that will rather give you an appetite than offend you with satiety." They were the first essays so-called in the language. "The word," said Bacon, "is late, but the thing is ancient." The word he took from the French essais of Montaigne, the first two books of which had been published in 1592. Bacon testified that his essays were the most popular of his writings because they "came home to men's business and bosoms." Their alternate title explains their character: Counsels Civil and Moral, that is, pieces ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... on the rocks near by show us where the summer neighbors of our host live, but at all seasons his wild neighbors are the ones he hobnobs with the most; while his indoor companions are Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Carlyle, Arnold, Wordsworth, Darwin, Huxley, Emerson, Whitman, Bergson, and many ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... longer, was in the Avenue Montaigne. It suited my tastes precisely, being extremely quiet, as it looked upon a retired garden, and the rooms were perfectly clean. There was only one story above the ground-floor, and here I took a bedroom ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a readiness, an eagerness to stand back and, as it were, pass on the Harden library. Rickman was a sharp fellow; he knew pretty well what he was about. Jewdwine's mind went back to the dawn of their acquaintance, and to a certain Florio Montaigne. Rickman had got the better of him over that Florio Montaigne. Hitherto, whenever Jewdwine had thought of that little transaction he had smiled in spite of himself; he really could not help admiring the smartness of a young man who had worsted him in a bargain. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... beginning of the fourteenth century. There may be no more than a distance of not quite a hundred years between the original of Joinville and the earliest MS. which we possess. But in those hundred years the French language did not remain stationary. Even as late as the time of Montaigne, when French has assumed a far greater literary steadiness, that writer complains of its constant change. "I wrote my book," he says in a memorable passage ("Essais," liv. 3, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... squared his shoulders not to give way to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in spite of his amusing ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Ben Jonson's discreditable drunken exploits in the French capital when he went thither as tutor to Sir Walter Ralegh's son. To these episodes might well be added the pleasant personal intercourse of Francis Bacon's brother, Anthony, with the great French essayist Montaigne, when the Englishman was sojourning at Bordeaux in 1583. Montaigne's Essays achieved hardly less fame in Elizabethan England than in France. Both Shakespeare and Bacon gave proof of indebtedness ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... and contention," said Isaiah, "and to smite with the fist of wickedness." While some German writers, not content with the great men Germany has so abundantly produced, vaunt that all others, from Jesus to Dante, from Montaigne to Michael Angelo, are of Teuton blood, Jewish literature unflinchingly exposes the flaws even of a Moses and a David. It is this passion for veracity unknown among other peoples—is even Washington's story told without gloss?—that gives false colour to the legend of Israel's ancient savagery. ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... to Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar and archbishop of Genoa, in 1292. His Golden Legend was the delight of our ancestors during the ages which preceded the revival of letters. The library of no monastery was without it. Like the essays of Montaigne, it was to be found on the shelf of every private person; and, for a long time after the invention of printing, no work more often issued from the press. After enjoying the highest degree of reputation, it lost much of its ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... was his sister Laure, who throughout his life was the most intimate friend he had, and to whom we owe his rescue from much scandalous and untrue gossip. From her we learn that their father was a combination of Montaigne, Rabelais, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie; Ridotta sips and dances, till she see The doubling lustres dance as fast as she; F—— loves the senate, Hockley-hole his brother, Like in all else, as one egg to another. I love to pour out all myself, as plain As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne: In them, as certain to be loved as seen, The soul stood forth, nor kept a thought within; In me what spots (for spots I have) appear, Will prove at least the medium must be clear. In this impartial glass, my muse intends Fair to expose myself, my foes, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... what seemed to Lydia's fatigued languor really miraculous speed. "It's true that she watches your social advance with the calm disinterestedness of a cat watching somebody pour cream out of a jug. She wants her saucerful. But look here. Did I ever tell you about the man Montaigne speaks of who spent all his life to acquire the skill necessary to throw a grain of millet through the eye of a needle? Well, that man was proud of it, but poor Marietta's haunted by doubts as to whether in her case it's been worth ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... work, I can protest beforehand, that I have not allowed myself to be influenced by any private consideration, by any feeling of hatred, affection, or gratitude. I have followed no impulse but that of my conscience, and I may say with Montaigne: ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... one hour after sunrise; and the high parts of Montaigne Pele are still misty blue. Under the palms and among the lava rocks, and also in little cabins farther up the slope, bathers are dressing or undressing: the water is also dotted with heads of swimmers. Women and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... themselves in themselves, but of the reflection of themselves, in others, of the impression they make on the world around. Woman, we suspect, lives always before her glass, and makes a mirror of existence. But for downright self-analysis, we repeat, she has little or no taste. A female Montaigne, a female Thackeray, would be a ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the glories of Bordeaux is having been the birth-place of Montaigne, whose tomb is in the church of the Feuillants, now the college. There are two inscriptions,—one Greek and one Latin; both of which appear ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... which the least civilised would abhor, and that many of the most absurd opinions and doctrines which have been imposed in the Dark Ages of ignorance continue to be the opinions and doctrines of ages enlightened by philosophy and learning. "If I was a philosopher," says Montaigne, "I would naturalise art instead of artilising Nature." The expression is odd, but the sense is good, and what he recommends would be done if the reasons that have been given did not stand in the way; if the self-interest of some men, the madness of others, and the universal pride of the human ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... Bordeaux, and by his exertions Buchanan was appointed professor of Latin. During his residence here several of his best works, the translations of Medea and Alcestis, and the two dramas, Jephthes (sive Votum) and Baptistes (sive Calumnia), were completed. Montaigne was Buchanan's pupil at Bordeaux and acted in his tragedies. In the essay Of Presumption he classes Buchanan with Aurat, Beza, de L'Hopital, Montdore and Turnebus, as one of the foremost Latin poets of his time. Here also Buchanan formed a lasting ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... effect of these discoveries, enormously and increasingly important from the material standpoint, was first felt in the widening of the imagination. Camoens wrote the epic of Da Gama, More placed his Utopia in America, and Montaigne speculated on the curious customs of the redskins. Ariosto wrote of the wonders of the new world in his poem, and Luther occasionally alluded to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Eugenie Grandet (Balzac), Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne), Emerson's Essays, Boswell's Life of Johnson, History of the English People (Green), Outlines of Universal History, Origin of Species, Montaigne's Essays, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, Whittier, Ruskin, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... caricature of the subject, what signifies whether the form is a little more or less ornate and luxurious? Meantime, I think to set a few heads before me, as good texts for winter evening entertainments. I wrote a deal about Napoleon a few months ago, after reading a library of memoirs. Now I have Plato, Montaigne, and Swedenborg, and more in the clouds behind. What news of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... then, we may say, as Montaigne said of himself, that he was a Platonist before he knew who Plato was. Yet he was the first Hellenistic Jew who perceived the fundamental harmony between the philosopher's idealism and Jewish monotheism, and he was the first important ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... and bishop of Auxerre; was of humble birth; was tutor of Charles, who appointed him grand-almoner; he was the translator, among other works, of Plutarch into French, which remains to-day one of the finest monuments of the old literature of France, it was much esteemed by Montaigne (1513-1593). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters" to be unacquainted with them. His first venture was a tiny volume called Essays, Religious Meditations, Places of Persuasion and Dissuasion (1597). This was modeled upon a French work by Montaigne (Essais, 1580) and was considered of small consequence by the author. As time went on, and his ambitious works were overlooked in favor of his sketches, he paid more attention to the latter, revising and enlarging his work until the final edition of fifty-eight ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... gave me. The subject is of perpetual interest, and it is treated, in many instances, with originality founded on truth, and with wonderful freshness. The remarks suggested by your own eminent career give to the general conduct of the theme additional interest, like the personal passages in Montaigne. I wish there had been more of them, or that you would favour the world with some observations on men and things, which one who is alike a statesman, a philosopher, and a scholar could alone supply. In your retirement you have the inestimable ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... with all this against him he should have been from the first a great moral and literary influence and the delight of the wisest and soundest minds the world has seen. Shakespeare read him, and Jonson; Montaigne, a greater than himself, is in some sort his descendant; Swift, in Coleridge's enlightening phrase, is 'anima Rabelaesii habitans in sicco'; to Sterne and Balzac and Moliere he was a constant inspiration; unto this day his work ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... In these famous Essays, so luminous with the gems of genius, we read not such worldly-wise exhortations as Lord Chesterfield impressed upon his son, not the gossiping frivolities of Horace Walpole, not the cynical wit of Montaigne, but those great certitudes which console in affliction, which kindle hope, which inspire lofty resolutions,—anchors of the soul, pillars of faith, sources of immeasurable joy, the glorious ideals of true objects ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord |
