Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Journey Into Italy, and Letters, with Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices, Etc

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Page 347 - Let others better mould the running mass Of metals, and inform the breathing brass, And soften into flesh, a marble face; Plead better at the bar; describe the skies, And when the stars descend, and when they rise. But Rome! 'tis thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey, Disposing peace and war, thy own majestic way: To tame the proud, the fettered slave to free: — These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.
Page 159 - For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.
Page 229 - But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate and grandeur.
Page 215 - But, in truth, all I understand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and most important difficulty of human science is the education of children.
Page 294 - This is a nation, I should say to Plato, in which there is no sort of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate or for political superiority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupations but leisure ones, no care for any but common kinship, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat.
Page 383 - Who then is free ? The wise, who well maintains An empire o'er himself: whom neither chains, Nor want, nor death, with slavish fear inspire; Who boldly answers to his warm desire ; Who can ambition's vainest gifts despise; Firm in himself who on himself relies ; Polish'd and round who runs his proper course, And breaks misfortune with superior force.
Page 137 - Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it. And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all ; one day is equal and like to all other days. There is...
Page 11 - That, in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work.
Page 7 - He scorned affected periods, or to please the mistaken reader with an empty chime of words. He hath no affection to set himself out, and dependeth wholly upon the natural force of what is his own, and the excellent application of what he borroweth.
Page 197 - In plain truth, the cares and expense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing, but to furnish our heads with knowledge; but not a word of judgment and virtue.

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