The Essays of Montaigne — Complete

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve.

This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.

And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive.

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others; ‘tis the last and extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for.

He afterwards proceeded to the Tyrol, where he was agreeably surprised, after the warnings which he had received, at the very slight inconveniences which he suffered, which gave him occasion to remark that he had all his life distrusted the statements of others respecting foreign countries, each person’s tastes being according to the notions of his native place; and that he had consequently set very little on what he was told beforehand.

He also would say that he seemed to himself like those who are reading some pleasant story or some fine book, of which they fear to come to the end: he felt so much pleasure in travelling that he dreaded the moment of arrival at the place where they were to stop for the night

A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same

This is true fame. A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.

"If it be ill to live in necessity, at least there is no necessity upon a man to live in necessity"

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.