Plato, moreover, says, that ‘tis the office of prudence to draw

instructions of divination of future things from dreams: I don’t know

about this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates,

Xenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate.

Historians say that the Atlantes never dream; who also never eat any

animal food, which I add, forasmuch as it is, peradventure, the reason

why they never dream, for Pythagoras ordered a certain preparation of

diet to beget appropriate dreams. Mine are very gentle, without any

agitation of body or expression of voice. I have seen several of my time

wonderfully disturbed by them. Theon the philosopher walked in his

sleep, and so did Pericles servant, and that upon the tiles and top of

the house.

I hardly ever choose my dish at table, but take the next at hand, and

unwillingly change it for another. A confusion of meats and a clatter of

dishes displease me as much as any other confusion: I am easily satisfied

with few dishes: and am an enemy to the opinion of Favorinus, that in a

feast they should snatch from you the meat you like, and set a plate of

another sort before you; and that ‘tis a pitiful supper, if you do not

sate your guests with the rumps of various fowls, the beccafico only

deserving to be all eaten. I usually eat salt meats, yet I prefer bread

that has no salt in it; and my baker never sends up other to my table,

contrary to the custom of the country. In my infancy, what they had most

to correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly best

love, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes. My tutor contended with

this aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety; and indeed

‘tis nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it applies

itself to. Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread,

bacon, or garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate. There are some

who affect temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongst

the partridges; ‘tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate;

‘tis the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes ordinary and

accustomed things.

“Per qux luxuria divitiarum taedio ludit.”

[“By which the luxury of wealth causes tedium.”--Seneca, Ep., 18.]

Not to make good cheer with what another is enjoying, and to be curious

in what a man eats, is the essence of this vice:

“Si modica coenare times olus omne patella.”

[“If you can’t be content with herbs in a small dish for supper.”

--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 2.]

There is indeed this difference, that ‘tis better to oblige one’s

appetite to things that are most easy to be had; but ‘tis always vice to

oblige one’s self. I formerly said a kinsman of mine was overnice, who,

by being in our galleys, had unlearned the use of beds and to undress

when he went to sleep.

If I had any sons, I should willingly wish them my fortune. The good

father that God gave me (who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment of

his goodness, but truly ‘tis a very hearty one) sent me from my cradle to

be brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all the

while I was at nurse, and still longer, bringing me up to the meanest and

most common way of living:

“Magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter.”

[“A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty.”

--Seneca,Ep., 123.]

Never take upon yourselves, and much less give up to your wives, the care

of their nurture; leave the formation to fortune, under popular and

natural laws; leave it to custom to train them up to frugality and

hardship, that they may rather descend from rigour than mount up to it.

This humour of his yet aimed at another end, to make me familiar with the

people and the condition of men who most need our assistance; considering

that I should rather regard them who extend their arms to me, than those

who turn their backs upon me; and for this reason it was that he provided

to hold me at the font persons of the meanest fortune, to oblige and

attach me to them.

Nor has his design succeeded altogether ill; for, whether upon the

account of the more honour in such a condescension, or out of a natural

compassion that has a very great power over me, I have an inclination

towards the meaner sort of people. The faction which I should condemn in

our wars, I should more sharply condemn, flourishing and successful; it

will somewhat reconcile me to it, when I shall see it miserable and

overwhelmed. How willingly do I admire the fine humour of Cheilonis,

daughter and wife to kings of Sparta. Whilst her husband Cleombrotus, in

the commotion of her city, had the advantage over Leonidas her father,

she, like a good daughter, stuck close to her father in all his misery

and exile, in opposition to the conqueror. But so soon as the chance of

war turned, she changed her will with the change of fortune, and bravely

turned to her husband’s side, whom she accompanied throughout, where his

ruin carried him: admitting, as it appears to me, no other choice than to

cleave to the side that stood most in need of her, and where she could

best manifest her compassion. I am naturally more apt to follow the

example of Flaminius, who rather gave his assistance to those who had

most need of him than to those who had power to do him good, than I do to

that of Pyrrhus, who was of an humour to truckle under the great and to

domineer over the poor.

Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm; for, be it that I

was so accustomed when a child, I eat all the while I sit. Therefore it

is that at my own house, though the meals there are of the shortest, I

usually sit down a little while after the rest, after the manner of

Augustus, but I do not imitate him in rising also before the rest; on the

contrary, I love to sit still a long time after, and to hear them talk,

provided I am none of the talkers: for I tire and hurt myself with

speaking upon a full stomach, as much as I find it very wholesome and

pleasant to argue and to strain my voice before dinner.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had more reason than we in setting apart

for eating, which is a principal action of life, if they were not

prevented by other extraordinary business, many hours and the greatest

part of the night; eating and drinking more deliberately than we do, who

perform all our actions post-haste; and in extending this natural

pleasure to more leisure and better use, intermixing with profitable

conversation.

They whose concern it is to have a care of me, may very easily hinder me

from eating anything they think will do me harm; for in such matters I

never covet nor miss anything I do not see; but withal, if it once comes

in my sight, ‘tis in vain to persuade me to forbear; so that when I

design to fast I must be kept apart from the suppers, and must have only

so much given me as is required for a prescribed collation; for if to

table, I forget my resolution. When I order my cook to alter the manner

of dressing any dish, all my family know what it means, that my stomach

is out of order, and that I shall not touch it.

I love to have all meats, that will endure it, very little boiled or

roasted, and prefer them very high, and even, as to several, quite gone.

Nothing but hardness generally offends me (of any other quality I am as

patient and indifferent as any man I have known); so that, contrary to

the common humour, even in fish it often happens that I find them both

too fresh and too firm; not for want of teeth, which I ever had good,

even to excellence, and which age does not now begin to threaten; I have

always been used every morning to rub them with a napkin, and before and

after dinner. God is favourable to those whom He makes to die by

degrees; ‘tis the only benefit of old age; the last death will be so much

the less painful; it will kill but a half or a quarter of a man. There

is one tooth lately fallen out without drawing and without pain; it was

the natural term of its duration; in that part of my being and several

others, are already dead, others half dead, of those that were most

active and in the first rank during my vigorous years; ‘tis so I melt and

steal away from myself. What a folly it would be in my understanding to

apprehend the height of this fall, already so much advanced, as if it

were from the very top! I hope I shall not. I, in truth, receive a

principal consolation in meditating my death, that it will be just and

natural, and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope

from Destiny any other but unlawful favour. Men make themselves believe

that we formerly had longer lives as well as greater stature. But they

deceive themselves; and Solon, who was of those elder times, limits the

duration of life to threescore and ten years. I, who have so much and so

universally adored that “The mean is best,” of the passed time, and who

have concluded the most moderate measures to be the most perfect, shall

I pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old age? Whatever happens

contrary to the course of nature may be troublesome; but what comes

according to her should always be pleasant:

“Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis.”

[“All things that are done according to nature

are to be accounted good.”--Cicero, De Senect., c. 19.]

And so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseases

is violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, is

of all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious:

“Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas.”

[“Young men are taken away by violence, old men by maturity.”

--Cicero, ubi sup.]

Death mixes and confounds itself throughout with life; decay anticipates

its hour, and shoulders itself even into the course of our advance.

I have portraits of myself taken at five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty

years of age. I compare them with that lately drawn: how many times is

it no longer me; how much more is my present image unlike the former,

than unlike my dying one? It is too much to abuse nature, to make her

trot so far that she must be forced to leave us, and abandon our conduct,

our eyes, teeth, legs, and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and

haggard countenance, and to resign us into the hands of art, being weary

of following us herself.

I am not excessively fond either of salads or fruits, except melons. My

father hated all sorts of sauces; I love them all. Eating too much hurts

me; but, as to the quality of what I eat, I do not yet certainly know

that any sort of meat disagrees with me; neither have I observed that

either full moon or decrease, autumn or spring, have any influence upon

me. We have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example,

I found radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, and

now again grateful. In several other things, I find my stomach and

appetite vary after the same manner; I have changed again and again from

white wine to claret, from claret to white wine.

I am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts and

feasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy of

digestion than flesh. As I make a conscience of eating flesh upon

fish-days, so does my taste make a conscience of mixing fish and flesh;

the difference betwixt them seems to me too remote.

From my youth, I have sometimes kept out of the way at meals; either to

sharpen my appetite against the next morning (for, as Epicurus fasted and

made lean meals to accustom his pleasure to make shift without abundance,

I, on the contrary, do it to prepare my pleasure to make better and more

cheerful use of abundance); or else I fasted to preserve my vigour for

the service of some action of body or mind: for both the one and the

other of these is cruelly dulled in me by repletion; and, above all

things, I hate that foolish coupling of so healthful and sprightly a

goddess with that little belching god, bloated with the fumes of his

liquor--[ Montaigne did not approve of coupling Bacchus with Venus.]--

or to cure my sick stomach, or for want of fit company; for I say, as the

same Epicurus did, that one is not so much to regard what he eats, as

with whom; and I commend Chilo, that he would not engage himself to be at

Periander’s feast till he was first informed who were to be the other

guests; no dish is so acceptable to me, nor no sauce so appetising, as

that which is extracted from society. I think it more wholesome to eat

more leisurely and less, and to eat oftener; but I would have appetite

and hunger attended to; I should take no pleasure to be fed with three or

four pitiful and stinted repasts a day, after a medicinal manner: who

will assure me that, if I have a good appetite in the morning, I shall

have the same at supper? But we old fellows especially, let us take the

first opportune time of eating, and leave to almanac-makers hopes and

prognostics. The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure; let us take hold

of the present and known. I avoid the invariable in these laws of

fasting; he who would have one form serve him, let him avoid the

continuing it; we harden ourselves in it; our strength is there stupefied

and laid asleep; six months after, you shall find your stomach so inured

to it, that all you have got is the loss of your liberty of doing

otherwise but to your prejudice.

I never keep my legs and thighs warmer in winter than in summer; one

simple pair of silk stockings is all. I have suffered myself, for the

relief of my colds, to keep my head warmer, and my belly upon the account

of my colic: my diseases in a few days habituate themselves thereto, and

disdained my ordinary provisions: we soon get from a coif to a kerchief

over it, from a simple cap to a quilted hat; the trimmings of the doublet

must not merely serve for ornament: there must be added a hare’s skin or

a vulture’s skin, and a cap under the hat: follow this gradation, and you

will go a very fine way to work. I will do nothing of the sort, and

would willingly leave off what I have begun. If you fall into any new

inconvenience, all this is labour lost; you are accustomed to it; seek

out some other. Thus do they destroy themselves who submit to be

pestered with these enforced and superstitious rules; they must add

something more, and something more after that; there is no end on’t.

For what concerns our affairs and pleasures, it is much more commodious,

as the ancients did, to lose one’s dinner, and defer making good cheer

till the hour of retirement and repose, without breaking up a day; and so

was I formerly used to do. As to health, I since by experience find, on

the contrary, that it is better to dine, and that the digestion is better

while awake. I am not very used to be thirsty, either well or sick; my

mouth is, indeed, apt to be dry, but without thirst; and commonly I never

drink but with thirst that is created by eating, and far on in the meal;

I drink pretty well for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a relishing

meal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thrice

precisely; but not to offend Democritus rule, who forbade that men should

stop at four times as an unlucky number, I proceed at need to the fifth

glass, about three half-pints; for the little glasses are my favourites,

and I like to drink them off, which other people avoid as an unbecoming

thing. I mix my wine sometimes with half, sometimes with the third part

water; and when I am at home, by an ancient custom that my father’s

physician prescribed both to him and himself, they mix that which is

designed for me in the buttery, two or three hours before ‘tis brought

in. ‘Tis said that Cranabs, king of Attica, was the inventor of this

custom of diluting wine; whether useful or no, I have heard disputed.

I think it more decent and wholesome for children to drink no wine till

after sixteen or eighteen years of age. The most usual and common method

of living is the most becoming; all particularity, in my opinion, is to

be avoided; and I should as much hate a German who mixed water with his

wine, as I should a Frenchman who drank it pure. Public usage gives the

law in these things.

I fear a mist, and fly from smoke as from the plague: the first repairs I

fell upon in my own house were the chimneys and houses of office, the

common and insupportable defects of all old buildings; and amongst the

difficulties of war I reckon the choking dust they made us ride in a

whole day together. I have a free and easy respiration, and my colds for

the most part go off without offence to the lungs and without a cough.

The heat of summer is more an enemy to me than the cold of winter; for,

besides the incommodity of heat, less remediable than cold, and besides

the force of the sunbeams that strike upon the head, all glittering light

offends my eyes, so that I could not now sit at dinner over against a

flaming fire.

To dull the whiteness of paper, in those times when I was more wont to

read, I laid a piece of glass upon my book, and found my eyes much

relieved by it. I am to this hour--to the age of fifty-four--Ignorant of

the use of spectacles; and I can see as far as ever I did, or any other.

‘Tis true that in the evening I begin to find a little disturbance and

weakness in my sight if I read, an exercise I have always found

troublesome, especially by night. Here is one step back, and a very

manifest one; I shall retire another: from the second to the third, and

so to the fourth, so gently, that I shall be stark blind before I shall

be sensible of the age and decay of my sight: so artificially do the

Fatal Sisters untwist our lives. And so I doubt whether my hearing

begins to grow thick; and you will see I shall have half lost it, when I

shall still lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me. A man

must screw up his soul to a high pitch to make it sensible how it ebbs

away.

My walking is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind or

my body, I have most to do to keep in the same state. That preacher is

very much my friend who can fix my attention a whole sermon through: in

places of ceremony, where every one’s countenance is so starched, where I

have seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never order

it so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though I

was seated, I was never settled; and as to gesticulation, I am never

without a switch in my hand, walking or riding. As the philosopher

Chrysippus’ maid said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs,

for it was his custom to be always kicking them about in what place

soever he sat; and she said it when, the wine having made all his

companions drunk, he found no alteration in himself at all; it may have

been said of me from my infancy, that I had either folly or quicksilver

in my feet, so much stirring and unsettledness there is in them, wherever

they are placed.

‘Tis indecent, besides the hurt it does to one’s health, and even to the

pleasure of eating, to eat greedily as I do; I often bite my tongue, and

sometimes my fingers, in my haste. Diogenes, meeting a boy eating after

that manner, gave his tutor a box on the ear! There were men at Rome

that taught people to chew, as well as to walk, with a good grace. I

lose thereby the leisure of speaking, which gives great relish to the

table, provided the discourse be suitable, that is, pleasant and short.

There is jealousy and envy amongst our pleasures; they cross and hinder

one another. Alcibiades, a man who well understood how to make good

cheer, banished even music from the table, that it might not disturb the

entertainment of discourse, for the reason, as Plato tells us, “that it

is the custom of ordinary people to call fiddlers and singing men to

feasts, for want of good discourse and pleasant talk, with which men of

understanding know how to entertain one another.” Varro requires all

this in entertainments: “Persons of graceful presence and agreeable

conversation, who are neither silent nor garrulous; neatness and

delicacy, both of meat and place; and fair weather.” The art of dining

well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither the

greatest captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use or

science of eating well. My imagination has delivered three repasts to

the custody of my memory, which fortune rendered sovereignly sweet to me,

upon several occasions in my more flourishing age; my present state

excludes me; for every one, according to the good temper of body and mind

wherein he then finds himself, furnishes for his own share a particular

grace and savour. I, who but crawl upon the earth, hate this inhuman

wisdom, that will have us despise and hate all culture of the body; I

look upon it as an equal injustice to loath natural pleasures as to be

too much in love with them. Xerxes was a blockhead, who, environed with

all human delights, proposed a reward to him who could find out others;

but he is not much less so who cuts off any of those pleasures that

nature has provided for him. A man should neither pursue nor avoid them,

but receive them. I receive them, I confess, a little too warmly and

kindly, and easily suffer myself to follow my natural propensions. We

have no need to exaggerate their inanity; they themselves will make us

sufficiently sensible of it, thanks to our sick wet-blanket mind, that

puts us out of taste with them as with itself; it treats both itself and

all it receives, one while better, and another worse, according to its

insatiable, vagabond, and versatile essence:

“Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit.”

[“Unless the vessel be clean, it will sour whatever

you put into it.”--Horace, Ep., i. 2, 54.]

I, who boast that I so curiously and particularly embrace the

conveniences of life, find them, when I most nearly consider them, very

little more than wind. But what? We are all wind throughout; and,

moreover, the wind itself, more discreet than we, loves to bluster and

shift from corner to corner, and contents itself with its proper offices

without desiring stability and solidity-qualities not its own.

The pure pleasures, as well as the pure displeasures, of the imagination,

say some, are the greatest, as was expressed by the balance of

Critolaiis. ‘Tis no wonder; it makes them to its own liking, and cuts

them out of the whole cloth; of this I every day see notable examples,

and, peradventure, to be desired. But I, who am of a mixed and heavy

condition, cannot snap so soon at this one simple object, but that I

negligently suffer myself to be carried away with the present pleasures

of the, general human law, intellectually sensible, and sensibly

intellectual. The Cyrenaic philosophers will have it that as corporal

pains, so corporal pleasures are more powerful, both as double and as

more just. There are some, as Aristotle says, who out of a savage kind

of stupidity dislike them; and I know others who out of ambition do the

same. Why do they not, moreover, forswear breathing? why do they not

live of their own? why not refuse light, because it is gratuitous, and

costs them neither invention nor exertion? Let Mars, Pallas, or Mercury

afford them their light by which to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and

Bacchus. These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for what

will not fancy do? But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it. Will they

not seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives? I hate

that we should be enjoined to have our minds in the clouds, when our

bodies are at table; I would not have the mind nailed there, nor wallow

there; I would have it take place there and sit, but not lie down.

Aristippus maintained nothing but the body, as if we had no soul; Zeno

comprehended only the soul, as if we had no body: both of them faultily.

Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation,

Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixt

the two; but they only say this for the sake of talking. The true

temperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic than

Pythagoric, and it becomes him better. When I dance, I dance; when I

sleep, I sleep. Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my

thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences,

I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard,

to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.

Nature has mother-like observed this, that the actions she has enjoined

us for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us

to them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and ‘tis injustice to

infringe her laws. When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst

of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I

do not say that he relaxed his mind: I say that he strengthened it, by

vigour of courage subjecting those violent employments and laborious

thoughts to the ordinary usage of life: wise, had he believed the last

was his ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation. We are great

fools. “He has passed his life in idleness,” say we: “I have done

nothing to-day.” What? have you not lived? that is not only the

fundamental, but the most illustrious, of your occupations. “Had I been

put to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what I

could do.” “Have you known how to meditate and manage your life? you

have performed the greatest work of all.” In order to shew and develop

herself, nature needs only fortune; she equally manifests herself in all

stages, and behind a curtain as well as without one. Have you known how

to regulate your conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who has

composed books. Have you known how to take repose, you have done more

than he who has taken empires and cities.

The glorious masterpiece of man is to live to purpose; all other things:

to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are but little appendices and

props. I take pleasure in seeing a general of an army, at the foot of a

breach he is presently to assault, give himself up entire and free at

dinner, to talk and be merry with his friends. And Brutus, when heaven

and earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing some

hour of the night from his rounds to read and scan Polybius in all

security. ‘Tis for little souls, buried under the weight of affairs, not

from them to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how to

lay them aside and take them up again:

“O fortes, pejoraque passi

Mecum saepe viri! nunc vino pellite curas

Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.”

[“O brave spirits, who have often suffered sorrow with me, drink

cares away; tomorrow we will embark once more on the vast sea.”

--Horace, Od., i. 7, 30.]

Whether it be in jest or earnest, that the theological and Sorbonnical

wine, and their feasts, are turned into a proverb, I find it reasonable

they should dine so much more commodiously and pleasantly, as they have

profitably and seriously employed the morning in the exercise of their

schools. The conscience of having well spent the other hours, is the

just and savoury sauce of the dinner-table. The sages lived after that

manner; and that inimitable emulation to virtue, which astonishes us both

in the one and the other Cato, that humour of theirs, so severe as even

to be importunate, gently submits itself and yields to the laws of the

human condition, of Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of their

sect, that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent in

the use of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:

“Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus.”

Relaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become a

strong and generous soul. Epaminondas did not think that to take part,

and that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men of

his city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of his

glorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him.

And amongst so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a person

worthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing that

gives him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishly

trifling at gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits,

[This game, as the “Dictionnaire de Trevoux” describes it, is one

wherein two persons contend which of them shall soonest pick up some

object.]

amusing and tickling himself in representing by writing in comedies the

meanest and most popular actions of men. And his head full of that

wonderful enterprise of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools in

Sicily, and attending philosophical lectures, to the extent of arming the

blind envy of his enemies at Rome. Nor is there anything more remarkable

in Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself

taught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time well

spent. This same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon his feet a

whole day and a night together, in the presence of all the Grecian army,

surprised and absorbed by some profound thought. He was the first,

amongst so many valiant men of the army, to run to the relief of

Alcibiades, oppressed with the enemy, to shield him with his own body,

and disengage him from the crowd by absolute force of arms. It was he

who, in the Delian battle, raised and saved Xenophon when fallen from his

horse; and who, amongst all the people of Athens, enraged as he was at so

unworthy a spectacle, first presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom

the thirty tyrants were leading to execution by their satellites, and

desisted not from his bold enterprise but at the remonstrance of

Theramenes himself, though he was only followed by two more in all. He

was seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintain

at need a severe abstinence. He was seen ever to go to the wars, and

walk upon ice, with bare feet; to wear the same robe, winter and summer;

to surpass all his companions in patience of bearing hardships, and to

eat no more at a feast than at his own private dinner. He was seen, for

seven-and-twenty years together, to endure hunger, poverty, the

indocility of his children, and the nails of his wife, with the same

countenance. And, in the end, calumny, tyranny, imprisonment, fetters,

and poison. But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any rule

of civility? he was also the man of the whole army with whom the

advantage in drinking, remained. And he never refused to play at

noisettes, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it became him

well; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally honour

a wise man. We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we ought never to

be weary of presenting the image of this great man in all the patterns

and forms of perfection. There are very few examples of life, full and

pure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose to ourselves those

that are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any one service, and rather

pull us back; corrupters rather than correctors of manners. The people

deceive themselves; a man goes much more easily indeed by the ends, where

the extremity serves for a bound, a stop, and guide, than by the middle

way, large and open; and according to art, more than according to nature:

but withal much less nobly and commendably.

Greatness of soul consists not so much in mounting and in pressing

forward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself; it takes

everything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself in

preferring moderate to eminent things. There is nothing so fine and

legitimate as well and duly to play the man; nor science so arduous as

well and naturally to know how to live this life; and of all the

infirmities we have, ‘tis the most barbarous to despise our being.

Whoever has a mind to isolate his spirit, when the body is ill at ease,

to preserve it from the contagion, let him by all means do it if he can:

but otherwise let him on the contrary favour and assist it, and not

refuse to participate of its natural pleasures with a conjugal

complacency, bringing to it, if it be the wiser, moderation, lest by

indiscretion they should get confounded with displeasure. Intemperance

is the pest of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge, but rather

its seasoning. Euxodus, who therein established the sovereign good, and

his companions, who set so high a value upon it, tasted it in its most

charming sweetness, by the means of temperance, which in them was

singular and exemplary.

I enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye equally

regulated:

“Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia

quo in dolore contractio,”

[“For from the same imperfection arises the expansion of the

mind in pleasure and its contraction in sorrow.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 31.]

and equally firm; but the one gaily and the other severely, and so far as

it is able, to be careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other.

The judging rightly of good brings along with it the judging soundly of

evil: pain has something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, and

pleasure something of the evitable in its excessive end. Plato couples

them together, and wills that it should be equally the office of

fortitude to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and charming

blandishments of pleasure: they are two fountains, from which whoever

draws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or beast, is very

fortunate. The first is to be taken medicinally and upon necessity, and

more scantily; the other for thirst, but not to, drunkenness. Pain,

pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible

of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.

I have a special vocabulary of my own; I “pass away time,” when it is ill

and uneasy, but when ‘tis good I do not pass it away: “I taste it over

again and adhere to it”; one must run over the ill and settle upon the

good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time,

represents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannot

do better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, pass

them over, and baulk them, and, as much as they can, ignore them and shun

them as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality: but I know it to

be another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious, even

in its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered it

into our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we have only

ourselves to blame if it be troublesome to us, or escapes us

unprofitably:

“Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur.”

[“The life of a fool is thankless, timorous, and wholly bent upon

the future.”--Seneca, Ep:, 15.]

Nevertheless I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal as

a thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it molests or

annoys me. Nor does it properly well become any not to be displeased

when they die, excepting such as are pleased to live. There is good

husbandry in enjoying it: I enjoy it double to what others do; for the

measure of its fruition depends upon our more or less application to it.

Chiefly that I perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extend

it in weight; I will stop the promptitude of its flight by the

promptitude of my grasp; and by the vigour of using it compensate the

speed of its running away. In proportion as the possession of life is

more short, I must make it so much deeper and fuller.

Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, as

well as they, but not as it passes and slips by; one should study, taste,

and ruminate upon it to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us.

They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing

it. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from

me, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I

might the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder with

myself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my

reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find

myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me?

I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to

it too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; not

there to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its

part, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate

its happiness and to amplify it. It reckons how much it stands indebted

to God that its conscience and the intestine passions are in repose; that

it has the body in its natural disposition, orderly and competently

enjoying the soft and soothing functions by which He, of His grace is

pleased to compensate the sufferings wherewith His justice at His good

pleasure chastises us. It reflects how great a benefit it is to be so

protected, that which way soever it turns its eye the heavens are calm

around it. No desire, no fear, no doubt, troubles the air; no

difficulty, past, present, or to, come, that its imagination may not pass

over without offence. This consideration takes great lustre from the

comparison of different conditions. So it is that I present to my

thought, in a thousand aspects, those whom fortune or their own error

carries away and torments. And, again, those who, more like to me, so

negligently and incuriously receive their good fortune. Those are folks

who spend their time indeed; they pass over the present and that which

they possess, to wait on hope, and for shadows and vain images which

fancy puts before them:

“Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras,

Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:”

[“Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about,

or dreams which delude the senses in sleep.”--AEneid, x. 641.]

which hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are pursued.

The fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander said, that

the end of his labour was to labour:

“Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum.”

[“Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done.

--“Lucan, ii. 657.]

For my part then, I love life and cultivate it, such as it has pleased

God to bestow it upon us. I do not desire it should be without the

necessity of eating and drinking; and I should think it a not less

excusable failing to wish it had been twice as long;

“Sapiens divitiarum naturalium quaesitor acerrimus:”

[“A wise man is the keenest seeker for natural riches.”

--Seneca, Ep., 119.]

nor that we should support ourselves by putting only a little of that

drug into our mouths, by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kept

himself alive; nor that we should stupidly beget children with our

fingers or heels, but rather; with reverence be it spoken, that we might

voluptuously beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the body

should be without desire and without titillation. These are ungrateful

and wicked complaints. I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what nature

has done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man does

wrong to that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigure

his gift: all goodness himself, he has made everything good:

“Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt.”

[“All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem.”

--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]

Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most

solid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is,

suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my

thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that ‘tis a

barbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable

with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the

dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by

a wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a

fair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action

according to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey.

Oh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in

getting their wives’ maidenheads than in its lesson.

This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as

he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more

force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according to

him, goes by no means alone--he is not so fantastic--but only it goes

first; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of

pleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than

prudent and just.

“Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus,

quid ea postulet, pervidendum.”

[“A man must search into the nature of things, and fully examine

what she requires.”--Cicero, De Fin., V. 16.]

I hunt after her foot throughout: we have confounded it with artificial

traces; and that academic and peripatetic good, which is “to live

according to it,” becomes on this account hard to limit and explain; and

that of the Stoics, neighbour to it, which is “to consent to nature.”

Is it not an error to esteem any actions less worthy, because they are

necessary? And yet they will not take it out of my head, that it is not

a very convenient marriage of pleasure with necessity, with which, says

an ancient, the gods always conspire. To what end do we dismember by

divorce a building united by so close and brotherly a correspondence?

Let us, on the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouse

and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix the

levity of the soul:

“Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum,

naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et

carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non

veritate divina.”

[“He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and

condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally

desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels

thus from human vanity, not from divine truth.”

--St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xiv. 5.]

In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care;

we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to

man, to conduct man according to his condition; ‘tis express, plain, and

the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly

prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to

matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language;

therefore let us again charge at it in this place:

“Stultitiae proprium quis non dixerit, ignave et contumaciter

facere, quae facienda sunt; et alio corpus impellere, alio animum;

distrahique inter diversissimos motus?”

[“Who will not say, that it is the property of folly, slothfully and

contumaciously to perform what is to be done, and to bend the body

one way and the mind another, and to be distracted betwixt wholly

different motions?”--Seneca, Ep., 74.]

To make this apparent, ask any one, some day, to tell you what whimsies

and imaginations he put into his pate, upon the account of which he

diverted his thoughts from a good meal, and regrets the time he spends in

eating; you will find there is nothing so insipid in all the dishes at

your table as this wise meditation of his (for the most part we had

better sleep than wake to the purpose we wake); and that his discourses

and notions are not worth the worst mess there. Though they were the

ecstasies of Archimedes himself, what then? I do not here speak of, nor

mix with the rabble of us ordinary men, and the vanity of the thoughts

and desires that divert us, those venerable souls, elevated by the ardour

of devotion and religion, to a constant and conscientious meditation of

divine things, who, by the energy of vivid and vehement hope,

prepossessing the use of the eternal nourishment, the final aim and last

step of Christian desires, the sole constant, and incorruptible pleasure,

disdain to apply themselves to our necessitous, fluid, and ambiguous

conveniences, and easily resign to the body the care and use of sensual

and temporal pasture; ‘tis a privileged study. Between ourselves, I have

ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of

singular accord.

AEsop, that great man, saw his master piss as he walked: “What then,”

said he, “must we drop as we run?” Let us manage our time; there yet

remains a great deal idle and ill employed. The mind has not willingly

other hours enough wherein to do its business, without disassociating

itself from the body, in that little space it must have for its

necessity. They would put themselves out of themselves, and escape from

being men. It is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels,

they transform themselves into beasts; instead of elevating, they lay

themselves lower. These transcendental humours affright me, like high

and inaccessible places; and nothing is hard for me to digest in the life

of Socrates but his ecstasies and communication with demons; nothing so

human in Plato as that for which they say he was called divine; and of

our sciences, those seem to be the most terrestrial and low that are

highest mounted; and I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life of

Alexander as his fancies about his immortalisation. Philotas pleasantly

quipped him in his answer; he congratulated him by letter concerning the

oracle of Jupiter Ammon, which had placed him amongst the gods: “Upon thy

account I am glad of it, but the men are to be pitied who are to live

with a man, and to obey him, who exceeds and is not contented with the

measure of a man:”

“Diis to minorem quod geris, imperas.”

[“Because thou carriest thyself lower than the gods, thou rulest.”

--Horace, Od., iii. 6, 5.]

The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry of

Pompey into their city is conformable to my sense: “By so much thou art

a god, as thou confessest thee a man.” ‘Tis an absolute and, as it were,

a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being.

We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our

own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside.

‘Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must

yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in

the world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my

opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common

and human model without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands a

little in need of a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God,

the protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable:

“Frui paratis et valido mihi

Latoe, dones, et precor, integra

Cum mente; nec turpem senectam

Degere, nec Cithara carentem.”

[“Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy my possessions in good

health; let me be sound in mind; let me not lead a dishonourable

old age, nor want the cittern.”--Horace, Od., i. 31, 17.]

Or:

[“Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy what I have in good

health; let me be sound in body and mind; let me live in honour when

old, nor let music be wanting.”]

APOLOGY:

[In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very few

quotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but the

multitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne’s text,

only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595] he had made these

collections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his

“idleness.”--Le Clerc. They grow, however, more sparing in the Third

Book.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty

Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit

Alexander said, that the end of his labour was to labour

All actions equally become and equally honour a wise man

As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law

At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little

better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious a num

Both kings and philosophers go to stool

Cannot stand the liberty of a friend’s advice

Cleave to the side that stood most in need of her

Condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes

Customs and laws make justice

Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press

Diversity of medical arguments and opinions embraces all

Every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent

Excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others

First informed who were to be the other guests

Go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside

Got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one

Hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears

How many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment

“I have done nothing to-day.”--“What? have you not lived?”

If it be a delicious medicine, take it

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not

Intemperance is the pest of pleasure

Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts

Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man

Law: breeder of altercation and division

Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws

Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me.

Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding

Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own

Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm

Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure

Man after who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool

Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool

More ado to interpret interpretations

More books upon books than upon any other subject

Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing

None that less keep their promise (than physicians)

Nor get children but before I sleep, nor get them standing

Nothing so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws

Our justice presents to us but one hand

Perpetual scolding of his wife (of Socrates)

Physician: pass through all the diseases he pretends to cure

Plato angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking

Plato: lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country

Prolong your misery an hour or two

Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties

Resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience

Scratching is one of nature’s sweetest gratifications

Seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives

So weak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him

Soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity

Study makes me sensible how much I have to learn

Style wherewith men establish religions and laws

Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doub

That we may live, we cease to live

The mean is best

There is none of us who would not be worse than kings

Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done

Thinks nothing profitable that is not painful

Thou diest because thou art living

Tis so I melt and steal away from myself

Truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times

Truth, that for being older it is none the wiser

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade

We ought to grant free passage to diseases

Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger

Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture?

Wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself

Yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating?

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS FOR THE COMPLETE EDITION:

A child should not be brought up in his mother’s lap

A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused

A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts

A hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge

A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted

A little cheese when a mind to make a feast

A little thing will turn and divert us

A man may always study, but he must not always go to school

A man may govern himself well who cannot govern others so

A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry

A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them

A man must have courage to fear

A man never speaks of himself without loss

A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may

A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief

A man’s accusations of himself are always believed

A parrot would say as much as that

A person’s look is but a feeble warranty

A well-bred man is a compound man

A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty

A word ill taken obliterates ten years’ merit

Abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances

Abominate that incidental repentance which old age brings

Accept all things we are not able to refute

Accommodated my subject to my strength

Accursed be thou, as he that arms himself for fear of death

Accusing all others of ignorance and imposition

Acquiesce and submit to truth

Acquire by his writings an immortal life

Addict thyself to the study of letters

Addresses his voyage to no certain, port

Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy

Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one’s right

Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort

Affect words that are not of current use

Affection towards their husbands, (not) until they have lost them

Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit

Affright people with the very mention of death

Against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face

Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to learn?

Agitated betwixt hope and fear

Agitation has usurped the place of reason

Alexander said, that the end of his labour was to labour

All actions equally become and equally honour a wise man

All apprentices when we come to it (death)

All defence shows a face of war

All I aim at is, to pass my time at my ease

All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice

All judgments in gross are weak and imperfect

All over-nice solicitude about riches smells of avarice

All things have their seasons, even good ones

All think he has yet twenty good years to come

All those who have authority to be angry in my family

Almanacs

Always be parading their pedantic science

Always complaining is the way never to be lamented

Always the perfect religion

Am as jealous of my repose as of my authority

An advantage in judgment we yield to none

“An emperor,” said he, “must die standing”

An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets

Ancient Romans kept their youth always standing at school

And hate him so as you were one day to love him

And we suffer the ills of a long peace

Anger and hatred are beyond the duty of justice

Any argument if it be carried on with method

Any old government better than change and alteration

Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death

Anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater

Anything becomes foul when commended by the multitude

Anything of value in him, let him make it appear in his conduct

Appetite comes to me in eating

Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes

Appetite runs after that it has not

Appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have

Applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge

Apprenticeship and a resemblance of death

Apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand

Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do

Archer that shoots over, misses as much as he that falls short

Armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, robbery)

Arrogant ignorance

Art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons

“Art thou not ashamed,” said he to him, “to sing so well?”

Arts of persuasion, to insinuate it into our minds

As great a benefit to be without (children)

As if anything were so common as ignorance

As if impatience were of itself a better remedy than patience

As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law

Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it

Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs

At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm

At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little

Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance

Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen

Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses

Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men

Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget

Avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten

Away with that eloquence that enchants us with itself

Away with this violence! away with this compulsion!

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age

Be not angry to no purpose

Be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play

Bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well

Beast of company, as the ancient said, but not of the herd

Beauty of stature is the only beauty of men

Because the people know so well how to obey

Become a fool by too much wisdom

Being as impatient of commanding as of being commanded

Being dead they were then by one day happier than he

Being over-studious, we impair our health and spoil our humour

Belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul

Believing Heaven concerned at our ordinary actions

Best part of a captain to know how to make use of occasions

Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd

Best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice

Better at speaking than writing--Motion and action animate word

better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious a num

Better to be alone than in foolish and troublesome company

Blemishes of the great naturally appear greater

Books go side by side with me in my whole course

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose

Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise

Books I read over again, still smile upon me with fresh novelty

Books of things that were never either studied or understood

Both himself and his posterity declared ignoble, taxable

Both kings and philosophers go to stool

Burnt and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others

Business to-morrow

But ill proves the honour and beauty of an action by its utility

But it is not enough that our education does not spoil us

By resenting the lie we acquit ourselves of the fault

By suspecting them, have given them a title to do ill

“By the gods,” said he, “if I was not angry, I would execute you”

By the misery of this life, aiming at bliss in another

Caesar: he would be thought an excellent engineer to boot

Caesar’s choice of death: “the shortest”

Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace

Cannot stand the liberty of a friend’s advice

Carnal appetites only supported by use and exercise

Cato said: So many servants, so many enemies

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful

Certain other things that people hide only to show them

Change is to be feared

Change of fashions

Change only gives form to injustice and tyranny

Cherish themselves most where they are most wrong

Chess: this idle and childish game

Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act

Childish ignorance of many very ordinary things

Children are amused with toys and men with words

Cicero: on fame

Civil innocence is measured according to times and places

Cleave to the side that stood most in need of her

cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking disordered

College: a real house of correction of imprisoned youth

Coming out of the same hole

Commit themselves to the common fortune

Common consolation, discourages and softens me

Common friendships will admit of division

Conclude the depth of my sense by its obscurity

Concluding no beauty can be greater than what they see

Condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul

Condemn the opposite affirmation equally

Condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes

Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk

Confession enervates reproach and disarms slander

Confidence in another man’s virtue

Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves

Conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature

Consent, and complacency in giving a man’s self up to melancholy

Consoles himself upon the utility and eternity of his writings

Content: more easily found in want than in abundance

Counterfeit condolings of pretenders

Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates

Courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study

Crafty humility that springs from presumption

Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty

Cruelty is the very extreme of all vices

Culling out of several books the sentences that best please me

Curiosity and of that eager passion for news

Curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge

“Custom,” replied Plato, “is no little thing”

Customs and laws make justice

Dangerous man you have deprived of all means to escape

Dangers do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our end

Dearness is a good sauce to meat

Death can, whenever we please, cut short inconveniences

Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss

Death discharges us of all our obligations

Death has us every moment by the throat

Death is a part of you

Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato

Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen

Deceit maintains and supplies most men’s employment

Decree that says, “The court understands nothing of the matter”

Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy

Defend most the defects with which we are most tainted

Defer my revenge to another and better time

Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation

Delivered into our own custody the keys of life

Denying all solicitation, both of hand and mind

Depend as much upon fortune as anything else we do

Desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than by the need

Desire of travel

Desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled

Detest in others the defects which are more manifest in us

Did my discourses came only from my mouth or from my heart

Did not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory

Die well--that is, patiently and tranquilly

Difference betwixt memory and understanding

Difficulty gives all things their estimation

Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press

Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders

Discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the po

Disdainful, contemplative, serious and grave as the ass

Disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance?

Disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed

Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice

Dissentient and tumultuary drugs

Diversity of medical arguments and opinions embraces all

Diverting the opinions and conjectures of the people

Do not much blame them for making their advantage of our folly

Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them

Do not, nevertheless, always believe myself

Do thine own work, and know thyself

Doctors: more felicity and duration in their own lives?

Doctrine much more intricate and fantastic than the thing itself

Dost thou, then, old man, collect food for others’ ears?

Doubt whether those (old writings) we have be not the worst

Doubtful ills plague us worst

Downright and sincere obedience

Drugs being in its own nature an enemy to our health

Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one’s nature

Dying appears to him a natural and indifferent accident

Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold

Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination

Education

Education ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness

Effect and performance are not at all in our power

Either tranquil life, or happy death

Eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance

Emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate

Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure

Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty

Enough to do to comfort myself, without having to console others

Enslave our own contentment to the power of another?

Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it

Entertain us with fables: astrologers and physicians

Epicurus

Establish this proposition by authority and huffing

Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge

Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves

Events are a very poor testimony of our worth and parts

Every abridgment of a good book is a foolish abridgment

Every day travels towards death; the last only arrives at it

Every government has a god at the head of it

Every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent

Every place of retirement requires a walk

Everything has many faces and several aspects

Examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned

Excel above the common rate in frivolous things

Excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others

Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices

Expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other

Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question

Extremity of philosophy is hurtful

Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand

Fame: an echo, a dream, nay, the shadow of a dream

Fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does

Fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting

Far more easy and pleasant to follow than to lead

Fathers conceal their affection from their children

Fault not to discern how far a man’s worth extends

Fault will be theirs for having consulted me

Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence

Fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself

Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself

Fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented?

Fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing

Fear: begets a terrible astonishment and confusion

Feared, lest disgrace should make such delinquents desperate

Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure

Few men have been admired by their own domestics

Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it

First informed who were to be the other guests

First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time

Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness

Follies do not make me laugh, it is our wisdom which does

Folly and absurdity are not to be cured by bare admonition

Folly of gaping after future things

Folly satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be

Folly than to be moved and angry at the follies of the world

Folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it

Folly to put out their own light and shine by a borrowed lustre

For fear of the laws and report of men

For who ever thought he wanted sense?

Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents

Fortune rules in all things

Fortune sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word

Fortune will still be mistress of events

Fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain

Friend, it is not now time to play with your nails

Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese

Friendships that the law and natural obligation impose upon us

Fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed

Gain to change an ill condition for one that is uncertain

Gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse

Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence

Gently to bear the inconstancy of a lover

Gewgaw to hang in a cabinet or at the end of the tongue

Give but the rind of my attention

Give me time to recover my strength and health

Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture

Give these young wenches the things they long for

Give us history, more as they receive it than as they believe it

Giving is an ambitious and authoritative quality

Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul

Go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside

Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed

Good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain

Got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one

Gradations above and below pleasure

Gratify the gods and nature by massacre and murder

Great presumption to be so fond of one’s own opinions

Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed

Greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose

Greedy humour of new and unknown things

Grief provokes itself

Gross impostures of religions

Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms

Happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it to fortune

Hard to resolve a man’s judgment against the common opinions

Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself

Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint

Hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself

Have ever had a great respect for her I loved

Have more wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go

Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears

Have you ever found any who have been dissatisfied with dying?

Having too good an opinion of our own worth

He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked

He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man’s concern

He felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an action

He judged other men by himself

He may employ his passion, who can make no use of his reason

He may well go a foot, they say, who leads his horse in his hand

He must fool it a little who would not be deemed wholly a fool

He should discern in himself, as well as in others

He took himself along with him

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears

He who is only a good man that men may know it

He who lays the cloth is ever at the charge of the feast

He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere

He who provides for all, provides for nothing

He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course

He will choose to be alone

Headache should come before drunkenness

Health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their promises

Health is altered and corrupted by their frequent prescriptions

Health to be worth purchasing by all the most painful cauteries

Hearing a philosopher talk of military affairs

Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault

Help: no other effect than that of lengthening my suffering

High time to die when there is more ill than good in living

Hoary head and rivelled face of ancient usage

Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as others--

Hold a stiff rein upon suspicion

Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints

Homer: The only words that have motion and action

Honour of valour consists in fighting, not in subduing

How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is

How many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment

How many more have died before they arrived at thy age

How many several ways has death to surprise us?

“How many things,” said he, “I do not desire!”

How many worthy men have we known to survive their reputation

How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out

How much it costs him to do no worse

How much more insupportable and painful an immortal life

How uncertain duration these accidental conveniences are

Humble out of pride

Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong

I always find superfluity superfluous

I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish

I am apt to dream that I dream

I am disgusted with the world I frequent

I am hard to be got out, but being once upon the road

I am no longer in condition for any great change

I am not to be cuffed into belief

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable

I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others

I am very willing to quit the government of my house

I bequeath to Areteus the maintenance of my mother

I can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any virtue

I cannot well refuse to play with my dog

I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle

I dare not promise but that I may one day be so much a fool

I do not consider what it is now, but what it was then

I do not judge opinions by years

I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather

I do not say that ‘tis well said, but well thought

I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback

I enter into confidence with dying

I ever justly feared to raise my head too high

I every day hear fools say things that are not foolish

I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony

I find no quality so easy to counterfeit as devotion

I for my part always went the plain way to work

I grudge nothing but care and trouble

I had much rather die than live upon charity

I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age

I hail and caress truth in what quarter soever I find it

I hate all sorts of tyranny, both in word and deed

I hate poverty equally with pain

I have a great aversion from a novelty

“I have done nothing to-day”--“What? have you not lived?”

I have lived longer by this one day than I should have done

I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead

I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question

I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment

I honour those most to whom I show the least honour

I lay no great stress upon my opinions; or of others

I look upon death carelessly when I look upon it universally

I love stout expressions amongst gentle men

I love temperate and moderate natures

I need not seek a fool from afar; I can laugh at myself

I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason

I receive but little advice, I also give but little

I scorn to mend myself by halves

I see no people so soon sick as those who take physic

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare

I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you will

I understand my men even by their silence and smiles

I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence

I was too frightened to be ill

“I wish you good health”--“No health to thee” replied the other

I would as willingly be lucky as wise

I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing

I write my book for few men and for few years

Idleness is to me a very painful labour

Idleness, the mother of corruption

If a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away

If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me

If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it

If it be a delicious medicine, take it

If it be the writer’s wit or borrowed from some other

If nature do not help a little, it is very hard

If they can only be kind to us out of pity

If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report

If they hear no noise, they think men sleep

If to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt

Ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it

Impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover

Ill luck is good for something

Imagne the mighty will not abase themselves so much as to live

Imitating other men’s natures, thou layest aside thy own

Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation

Impose them upon me as infallible

Impostures: very strangeness lends them credit

Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair

Impunity pass with us for justice

In everything else a man may keep some decorum

In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and shy

In solitude, be company for thyself--Tibullus

In sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure

In the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors

In this last scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting

In those days, the tailor took measure of it

In war not to drive an enemy to despair

Inclination to love one another at the first sight

Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both

Incline the history to their own fancy

Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation

Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war)

Indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us

Indocile liberty of this member

Inquisitive after everything

Insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us

Insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not

Intemperance is the pest of pleasure

Intended to get a new husband than to lament the old

Interdict all gifts betwixt man and wife

Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden

It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me

It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in

It is better to die than to live miserable

It is no hard matter to get children

It is not a book to read, ‘tis a book to study and learn

It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part

It’s madness to nourish infirmity

Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience

Judge by justice, and choose men by reason

Judge by the eye of reason, and not from common report

Judgment of duty principally lies in the will

Judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser thing

Justice als takes cognisance of those who glean after the reaper

Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge

Knock you down with the authority of their experience

Knot is not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip

Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment

Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment

Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists

Known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new

Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs

Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts

Lascivious poet: Homer

Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man

Law: breeder of altercation and division

Laws (of Plato on travel), which forbids it after threescore

Laws cannot subsist without mixture of injustice

Laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would

Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws

Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me

Laying themselves low to avoid the danger of falling

Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding

Learn the theory from those who best know the practice

Learn what it is right to wish

Learning improves fortunes enough, but not minds

Least end of a hair will serve to draw them into my discourse

Least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole

Leave society when we can no longer add anything to it

Leaving nothing unsaid, how home and bitter soever

Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words

Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself

Lessen the just value of things that I possess

“Let a man take which course he will,” said he; “he will repent”

Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man

Let him be satisfied with correcting himself

Let him examine every man’s talent

Let it alone a little

Let it be permitted to the timid to hope

Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think

Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ‘tis in us

Liberality at the expense of others

Liberty and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me

Liberty of poverty

Liberty to lean, but not to lay our whole weight upon others

Library: Tis there that I am in my kingdom

License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs

Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own

Life should be cut off in the sound and living part

Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb

Light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years

Little affairs most disturb us

Little knacks and frivolous subtleties

Little learning is needed to form a sound mind--Seneca

Little less trouble in governing a private family than a kingdom

Live a quite contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others

Live at the expense of life itself

Live, not so long as they please, but as long as they ought

Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting

Living well, which of all arts is the greatest

Llaying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons

Lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust

Long a voyage I should at last run myself into some disadvantage

Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm

Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation

Look on death not only without astonishment but without care

Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger

Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things

Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up

Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up

Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty

Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage

Love them the less for our own faults

Love we bear to our wives is very lawful

Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty

Loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men

Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence

Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure

Making their advantage of our folly, for most men do the same

Malice must be employed to correct this arrogant ignorance

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom

Malicious kind of justice

Man (must) know that he is his own

Man after who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool

Man can never be wise but by his own wisdom

Man may say too much even upon the best subjects

Man may with less trouble adapt himself to entire abstinence

Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance

Man must have a care not to do his master so great service

Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool

Man runs a very great hazard in their hands (of physicians)

Mark of singular good nature to preserve old age

Marriage

Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love

Melancholy: Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

Memories are full enough, but the judgment totally void

Men approve of things for their being rare and new

Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions

Men as often commend as undervalue me beyond reason

Men make them (the rules) without their (women’s) help

Men must embark, and not deliberate, upon high enterprises

Men should furnish themselves with such things as would float

Mercenaries who would receive any (pay)

Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle

Methinks I am no more than half of myself

Methinks I promise it, if I but say it

Miracle: everything our reason cannot comprehend

Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me

Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature

Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one’s health to one’s disease!

Miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself

Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known

Mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations

Moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering

Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer)

More ado to interpret interpretations

More books upon books than upon any other subject

More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment

More solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak

More supportable to be always alone than never to be so

More valued a victory obtained by counsel than by force

Morosity and melancholic humour of a sour ill-natured pedant

Most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency

Most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit

Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice

Mothers are too tender

Motive to some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit

Much better to offend him once than myself every day

Much difference betwixt us and ourselves

Must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves

Must of necessity walk in the steps of another

My affection alters, my judgment does not

My books: from me hold that which I have not retained

My dog unseasonably importunes me to play

My fancy does not go by itself, as when my legs move it

My humour is no friend to tumult

My humour is unfit either to speak or write for beginners

My innocence is a simple one; little vigour and no art

My mind is easily composed at distance

My reason is not obliged to bow and bend; my knees are

My thoughts sleep if I sit still

My words does but injure the love I have conceived within

Natural death the most rare and very seldom seen

Nature of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow

Nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden

Nature, who left us in such a state of imperfection

Nearest to the opinions of those with whom they have to do

Negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men

Neither be a burden to myself nor to any other

Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire

Neither men nor their lives are measured by the ell

Neither the courage to die nor the heart to live

Never any man knew so much, and spake so little

Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing

Never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions

Never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd

Never represent things to you simply as they are

Never spoke of my money, but falsely, as others do

New World: sold it opinions and our arts at a very dear rate

Nnone that less keep their promise(than physicians)

No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children

No beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man

No danger with them, though they may do us no good

No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active

No effect of virtue, to have stronger arms and legs

No evil is honourable; but death is honourable

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness

No great choice betwixt not knowing to speak anything but ill--

No man continues ill long but by his own fault

No man is free from speaking foolish things

No man more certain than another of to-morrow--Seneca

No necessity upon a man to live in necessity

No one can be called happy till he is dead and buried

No other foundation or support than public abuse

No passion so contagious as that of fear

No physic that has not something hurtful in it

No use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other

No way found to tranquillity that is good in common

Noble and rich, where examples of virtue are rarely lodged

Nobody prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless

Noise of arms deafened the voice of laws

None of the sex, let her be as ugly as the devil thinks lovable

Nor get children but before I sleep, nor get them standing

Nor have other tie upon one another, but by our word

Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own

Not a victory that puts not an end to the war

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself

Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred

Not certain to live till I came home

Not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark

Not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity

Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself

Not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No!

Not in a condition to lend must forbid himself to borrow

Not melancholic, but meditative

Not to instruct but to be instructed

Not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice

Nothing can be a grievance that is but once

Nothing falls where all falls

Nothing is more confident than a bad poet

Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know

Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding

Nothing noble can be performed without danger

Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation

Nothing so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws

Nothing tempts my tears but tears

Nothing that so poisons as flattery

Number of fools so much exceeds the wise

O Athenians, what this man says, I will do

O my friends, there is no friend: Aristotle

O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime

O, the furious advantage of opportunity!

Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and disputes

Obliged to his age for having weaned him from pleasure

Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities

Obstinacy is the sister of constancy

Obstinancy and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly

Obstinate in growing worse

Occasion to La Boetie to write his “Voluntary Servitude”

Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous

Occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal cause

Of the fleeting years each steals something from me

Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate

Oftentimes agitated with divers passions

Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present

Old men who retain the memory of things past

Omit, as incredible, such things as they do not understand

On all occasions to contradict and oppose

One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out

One may be humble out of pride

One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare

One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present

One must first know what is his own and what is not

Only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent

Only secure harbour from the storms and tempests of life

Only set the humours they would purge more violently in work

Open speaking draws out discoveries, like wine and love

Opinions they have of things and not by the things themselves

Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust

Opposition and contradiction entertain and nourish them

Option now of continuing in life or of completing the voyage

Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better

Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune

Ordinances it (Medicine) foists upon us

Ordinary friendships, you are to walk with bridle in your hand

Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life

Others adore all of their own side

Ought not only to have his hands, but his eyes, too, chaste

Ought not to expect much either from his vigilance or power

Ought to withdraw and retire his soul from the crowd

Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning

Our fancy does what it will, both with itself and us

Our judgments are yet sick

Our justice presents to us but one hand

Our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation

Our qualities have no title but in comparison

Our will is more obstinate by being opposed

Over-circumspect and wary prudence is a mortal enemy

Overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent

Owe ourselves chiefly and mostly to ourselves

Passion has a more absolute command over us than reason

Passion has already confounded his judgment

Passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born

Pay very strict usury who did not in due time pay the principal

People are willing to be gulled in what they desire

People conceiving they have right and title to be judges

Perfect friendship I speak of is indivisible

Perfect men as they are, they are yet simply men

Perfection: but I will not buy it so dear as it costs

Perpetual scolding of his wife (of Socrates)

Petulant madness contends with itself

Philopoemen: paying the penalty of my ugliness

Philosophy

Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood

Philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die

Philosophy is that which instructs us to live

Philosophy looked upon as a vain and fantastic name

Phusicians cure by by misery and pain

Physic

Physician worse physicked

Physician: pass through all the diseases he pretends to cure

Physician’s “help”, which is very often an obstacle

Physicians are not content to deal only with the sick

Physicians fear men should at any time escape their authority

Physicians were the only men who might lie at pleasure

Physicians: earth covers their failures

Pinch the secret strings of our imperfections

Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law

Pity is reputed a vice amongst the Stoics

Plato angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age

Plato said of the Egyptians, that they were all physicians

Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport

Plato will have nobody marry before thirty

Plato: lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country

Plays of children are not performed in play

Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit

Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing

Possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules

Practical Jokes: Tis unhandsome to fight in play

Preachers very often work more upon their auditory than reasons

Preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader

Prefer in bed, beauty before goodness

Preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties

Premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty

Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death

Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue

Present himself with a halter about his neck to the people

Presumptive knowledge by silence

Pretending to find out the cause of every accident

Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride

Proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world

Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit

Profit made only at the expense of another

Prolong his life also prolonged and augmented his pain

Prolong your misery an hour or two

Prudent and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent

Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture

Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet

Public weal requires that men should betray, and lie

Puerile simplicities of our children

Pure cowardice that makes our belief so pliable

Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties

Pyrrho’s hog

Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams

Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will

Rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury

Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom

Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so

Rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory

Rather prating of another man’s province than his own

Reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls

Reasons often anticipate the effect

Recommendation of strangeness, rarity, and dear purchase

Refusin to justify, excuse, or explain myself

Regret so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold

Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest

Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus

Reputation: most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes

Repute for value in them, not what they bring to us

Reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free

Resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience

Rest satisfied, without desire of prolongation of life or name

Restoring what has been lent us, wit usury and accession

Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us

Revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties

Reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms

Rhetoric: an art to flatter and deceive

Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble

Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow

Ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them

Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle

Rome was more valiant before she grew so learned

Rowers who so advance backward

Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact

Same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago

Satisfaction of mind to have only one path to walk in

Satisfied and pleased with and in themselves

Say of some compositions that they stink of oil and of the lamp

Scratching is one of nature’s sweetest gratifications

Season a denial with asperity, suspense, or favour

See how flexible our reason is

Seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives

Seeming anger, for the better governing of my house

Send us to the better air of some other country

Sense: no one who is not contented with his share

Setting too great a value upon ourselves

Setting too little a value upon others

Settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have

Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level

Shake the truth of our Church by the vices of her ministers

Shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty

Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise

She who only refuses, because ‘tis forbidden, consents

Shelter my own weakness under these great reputations

Short of the foremost, but before the last

Should first have mended their breeches

Silence, therefore, and modesty are very advantageous qualities

Silent mien procured the credit of prudence and capacity

Sins that make the least noise are the worst

Sitting betwixt two stools

Slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk

Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul

Smile upon us whilst we are alive

So austere and very wise countenance and carriage--of physicians

So many trillions of men, buried before us

So much are men enslaved to their miserable being

So that I could have said no worse behind their backs

So weak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him

Socrates kept a confounded scolding wife

Socrates: According to what a man can

Soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity

Solon said that eating was physic against the malady hunger

Solon, that none can be said to be happy until he is dead

some people rude, by being overcivil in their courtesy

Some wives covetous indeed, but very few that are good managers

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind

Souls that are regular and strong of themselves are rare

Sparing and an husband of his knowledge

Speak less of one’s self than what one really is is folly

Spectators can claim no interest in the honour and pleasure

Stilpo lost wife, children, and goods

Stilpo: thank God, nothing was lost of his

Strangely suspect all this merchandise: medical care

Strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment

Studied, when young, for ostentation, now for diversion

Studies, to teach me to do, and not to write

Study makes me sensible how much I have to learn

Study of books is a languishing and feeble motion

Study to declare what is justice, but never took care to do it

Stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies

Stupidity and facility natural to the common people

Style wherewith men establish religions and laws

Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doub

Such a recipe as they will not take themselves

Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession

Suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided

Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe

Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing

Superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes

Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking

Swim in troubled waters without fishing in them

Take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men’s affairs

Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst

Take my last leave of every place I depart from

Take two sorts of grist out of the same sack

Taking things upon trust from vulgar opinion

Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance

Taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death

Tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments

Testimony of the truth from minds prepossessed by custom?

That he could neither read nor swim

That looks a nice well-made shoe to you

That we may live, we cease to live

That which cowardice itself has chosen for its refuge

The action is commendable, not the man

The age we live in produces but very indifferent things

The authors, with whom I converse

The Babylonians carried their sick into the public square

The best authors too much humble and discourage me

The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it

The cause of truth ought to be the common cause

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine

The consequence of common examples

The day of your birth is one day’s advance towards the grave

The deadest deaths are the best

The event often justifies a very foolish conduct

The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus

The gods sell us all the goods they give us

The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious

The honour we receive from those that fear us is not honour

The ignorant return from the combat full of joy and triumph

The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor

The last informed is better persuaded than the first

The mean is best

The mind grows costive and thick in growing old

The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness

The most voluntary death is the finest

The particular error first makes the public error

The pedestal is no part of the statue

The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it

The satiety of living, inclines a man to desire to die

The sick man has not to complain who has his cure in his sleeve

The storm is only begot by a concurrence of angers

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear

The very name Liberality sounds of Liberty

The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high

Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools

Their labour is not to delivery, but about conception

Their pictures are not here who were cast away

Their souls seek repose in agitation

There are defeats more triumphant than victories

There are some upon whom their rich clothes weep

There can be no pleasure to me without communication

There is more trouble in keeping money than in getting it

There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude

There is no long, nor short, to things that are no more

There is no merchant that always gains

There is no reason that has not its contrary

There is no recompense becomes virtue

There is none of us who would not be worse than kings

There is nothing I hate so much as driving a bargain

There is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections

There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature

These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous

They (good women) are not by the dozen, as every one knows

They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living

They better conquer us by flying

They buy a cat in a sack

They can neither lend nor give anything to one another

They do not see my heart, they see but my countenance

They err as much who too much forbear Venus

They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases)

They have heard, they have seen, they have done so and so

They have not one more invention left wherewith to amuse us

They have not the courage to suffer themselves to be corrected

They have yet touched nothing of that which is mine

They juggle and trifle in all their discourses at our expense

They must be very hard to please, if they are not contented

They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us

They neither instruct us to think well nor to do well

They never loved them till dead

They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers

Thing at which we all aim, even in virtue is pleasure

Things grow familiar to men’s minds by being often seen

Things I say are better than those I write

Things often appear greater to us at distance than near at hand

Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect

Things that engage us elsewhere and separate us from ourselves

Think myself no longer worth my own care

Think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me

Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done

Thinks nothing profitable that is not painful

This decay of nature which renders him useless, burdensome

This plodding occupation of bookes is as painfull as any other

Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures

Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile

Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear

Those who can please and hug themselves in what they do

Those within (marriage) despair of getting out

Thou diest because thou art living

Thou wilt not feel it long if thou feelest it too much

Though I be engaged to one forme, I do not tie the world unto it

Though nobody should read me, have I wasted time

Threats of the day of judgment

Thucydides: which was the better wrestler

Thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain

Tis all swine’s flesh, varied by sauces

Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private

Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine

Tis evil counsel that will admit no change

Tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it

Tis for youth to subject itself to common opinions

Tis impossible to deal fairly with a fool

Tis in some sort a kind of dying to avoid the pain of living well

Tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good

Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others

Tis not the cause, but their interest, that inflames them

Tis not the number of men, but the number of good men

Tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward

Tis so I melt and steal away from myself

Tis the sharpnss of our mind that gives the edge to our pains

Tis then no longer correction, but revenge

Tis there she talks plain French

Titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing others suffer

Title of barbarism to everything that is not familiar

Titles being so dearly bought

Titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter

To be a slave, incessantly to be led by the nose by one’s self

To be, not to seem

To condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption

To contemn what we do not comprehend

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular

To do well where there was danger was the proper office

To forbear doing is often as generous as to do

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to’t

To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself

To give a currency to his little pittance of learning

To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word

To keep me from dying is not in your power

To kill men, a clear and strong light is required

To know by rote, is no knowledge

To make little things appear great was his profession

To make their private advantage at the public expense

To smell, though well, is to stink

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die

To what friend dare you intrust your griefs

To whom no one is ill who can be good?

Tongue will grow too stiff to bend

Too contemptible to be punished

Torture: rather a trial of patience than of truth

Totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge

Transferring of money from the right owners to strangers

Travel with not only a necessary, but a handsome equipage

True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself

Truly he, with a great effort will shortly say a mighty trifle

Truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times

Truth, that for being older it is none the wiser

Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts

Turn up my eyes to heaven to return thanks, than to crave

Tutor to the ignorance and folly of the first we meet

Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband

Twenty people prating about him when he is at stool

Two opinions alike, no more than two hairs

Two principal guiding reins are reward and punishment

Tyrannic sourness not to endure a form contrary to one’s own

Tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures

Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything

Under fortune’s favour, to prepare myself for her disgrace

Universal judgments that I see so common, signify nothing

Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours

Unjust to exact from me what I do not owe

Upon the precipice, ‘tis no matter who gave you the push

Use veils from us the true aspect of things

Utility of living consists not in the length of days

Valour has its bounds as well as other virtues

Valour whetted and enraged by mischance

Valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear

Valuing the interest of discipline

Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience

Venture it upon his neighbour, if he will let him

venture the making ourselves better without any danger

Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous

Vice of confining their belief to their own capacity

Vices will cling together, if a man have not a care

Victorious envied the conquered

Virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together

Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality

Virtue is much strengthened by combats

Virtue refuses facility for a companion

Viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age

Voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance

Vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on

We are masters of nothing but the will

We are not to judge of counsels by events

We ask most when we bring least

We believe we do not believe

We can never be despised according to our full desert

We cannot be bound beyond what we are able to perform

We confess our ignorance in many things

We consider our death as a very great thing

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him

We do not easily accept the medicine we understand

We do not go, we are driven

We do not so much forsake vices as we change them

We have lived enough for others

We have more curiosity than capacity

We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death

We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings

We have taught the ladies to blush

We much more aptly imagine an artisan upon his close-stool

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade

We neither see far forward nor far backward

We only labour to stuff the memory

We ought to grant free passage to diseases

We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary

We set too much value upon ourselves

We still carry our fetters along with us

We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust

Weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy

Weigh, as wise: men should, the burden of obligation

Well, and what if it had been death itself?

Were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one

What a man says should be what he thinks

What are become of all our brave philosophical precepts?

What can they not do, what do they fear to do (for beauty)

What can they suffer who do not fear to die?

What did I say? that I have? no, Chremes, I had

What he did by nature and accident, he cannot do by design

What is more accidental than reputation?

What may be done to-morrow, may be done to-day

What more? they lie with their lovers learnedly

What need have they of anything but to live beloved and honoured

What sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another”

What step ends the near and what step begins the remote

What they ought to do when they come to be men

What we have not seen, we are forced to receive from other hands

What, shall so much knowledge be lost

Whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of a drug

When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself

When jealousy seizes these poor souls

When their eyes give the lie to their tongue

When time begins to wear things out of memory

When we have got it, we want something else

“When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet learning?”

When you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong

Where the lion’s skin is too short

Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too

Wherever the mind is perplexed, it is in an entire disorder

Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be some great thing

Whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead

Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word

Who can flee from himself

Who discern no riches but in pomp and show

Who does not boast of some rare recipe

Who escapes being talked of at the same rate

Who ever saw one physician approve of another’s prescription

Who has once been a very fool, will never after be very wise

Who would weigh him without the honour and grandeur of his end

Whoever expects punishment already suffers it

Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it

Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger

Whosoever despises his own life, is always master

Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture?

Wide of the mark in judging of their own works

Willingly give them leave to laugh after we are dead

Willingly slip the collar of command upon any pretence whatever

Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation

Wisdom is folly that does not accommodate itself to the common

Wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can

Wise man never loses anything if he have himself

Wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the impetus of friendship

Wise may learn more of fools, than fools can of the wise

Wise whose invested money is visible in beautiful villas

Wiser who only know what is needful for them to know

With being too well I am about to die

Woman who goes to bed to a man, must put off her modesty

Women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins

Wont to give others their life, and not to receive it

World where loyalty of one’s own children is unknown

Worse endure an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind

Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead

Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant

Wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself

Wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others

Write what he knows, and as much as he knows, but no more

Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud

Yet at least for ambition’s sake, let us reject ambition

Yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating?

You and companion are theatre enough to one another

You have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general

You may indeed make me die an ill death

You must first see us die

You must let yourself down to those with whom you converse

Young and old die upon the same terms

Young are to make their preparations, the old to enjoy them