So I watched White Album up to episode 4, but I’ve got nothing to say about it so I’m just gonna let Montaigne take over. This 16th century humanist philosopher.

If you like Nietzsche, you’ll find a lot to like here. In fact, many of Nietzsche’s aphorisms are direct reactions to some of these.

Tell me if there are particular ones that strike your fancy.

1. A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
   Michel de Montaigne
2. A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
   Michel de Montaigne
3. A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
   Michel de Montaigne
4. A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
   Michel de Montaigne
   A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
   Michel de Montaigne
5. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
   Michel de Montaigne
6. Ambition is not a vice of little people.
   Michel de Montaigne
7. An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
   Michel de Montaigne
8. An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
   Michel de Montaigne
9. Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
   Michel de Montaigne
10. Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.
    Michel de Montaigne
11. Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one’s own goodness.
    Michel de Montaigne
12. Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
    Michel de Montaigne
13. Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
    Michel de Montaigne
14. Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
    Michel de Montaigne
15. Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
    Michel de Montaigne
16. Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.
    Michel de Montaigne
17. Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
    Michel de Montaigne
18. Few men have been admired of their familiars.
    Michel de Montaigne
19. For truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
    Michel de Montaigne
20. Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
    Michel de Montaigne
21. He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
    Michel de Montaigne
22. He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
    Michel de Montaigne
23. How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
    Michel de Montaigne
24. How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
    Michel de Montaigne
25. I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
    Michel de Montaigne
26. I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
    Michel de Montaigne
27. I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
    Michel de Montaigne
28. I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
    Michel de Montaigne
29. I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
    Michel de Montaigne
30. I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
    Michel de Montaigne
31. I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
    Michel de Montaigne
32. I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
    Michel de Montaigne
33. I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
    Michel de Montaigne
34. I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.
    Michel de Montaigne
35. I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
    Michel de Montaigne
36. I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
    Michel de Montaigne
37. I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
    Michel de Montaigne
38. 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.
    Michel de Montaigne
39. If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
    Michel de Montaigne
40. If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
    Michel de Montaigne
41. If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
    Michel de Montaigne
42. If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.
    Michel de Montaigne
43. If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
    Michel de Montaigne
44. Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
    Michel de Montaigne
45. In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
    Michel de Montaigne
46. In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk – they are all part of the curriculum.
    Michel de Montaigne
47. It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
    Michel de Montaigne
48. It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
    Michel de Montaigne
49. It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
    Michel de Montaigne
50. It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
    Michel de Montaigne
51. It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
    Michel de Montaigne
52. It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
    Michel de Montaigne
53. It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
    Michel de Montaigne
54. Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
    Michel de Montaigne
55. Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
    Michel de Montaigne
56. Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
    Michel de Montaigne
57. Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
    Michel de Montaigne
58. Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
    Michel de Montaigne
59. Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
    Michel de Montaigne
60. Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
    Michel de Montaigne
61. My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
    Michel de Montaigne
62. My trade and art is to live.
    Michel de Montaigne
63. No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
    Michel de Montaigne
64. No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
    Michel de Montaigne
65. Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
    Michel de Montaigne
66. Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
    Michel de Montaigne
67. Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
    Michel de Montaigne
68. Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
    Michel de Montaigne
69. Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
    Michel de Montaigne
70. One may be humble out of pride.
    Michel de Montaigne
71. Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
    Michel de Montaigne
72. Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
    Michel de Montaigne
73. Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
    Michel de Montaigne
74. The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
    Michel de Montaigne
75. The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
    Michel de Montaigne
76. The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
    Michel de Montaigne
77. The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
    Michel de Montaigne
78. The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
    Michel de Montaigne
79. The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
    Michel de Montaigne
80. The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
    Michel de Montaigne
81. The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
    Michel de Montaigne
82. The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
    Michel de Montaigne
83. The thing I fear most is fear.
    Michel de Montaigne
84. The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
    Michel de Montaigne
85. The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
    Michel de Montaigne
86. The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
    Michel de Montaigne
87. The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
    Michel de Montaigne
88. The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
    Michel de Montaigne
89. There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
    Michel de Montaigne
90. There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
    Michel de Montaigne
91. There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
    Michel de Montaigne
92. There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
    Michel de Montaigne
93. There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
    Michel de Montaigne
94. There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
    Michel de Montaigne
95. There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
    Michel de Montaigne
96. There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
    Michel de Montaigne
97. There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
    Michel de Montaigne
98. Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
    Michel de Montaigne
99. ‘Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
    Michel de Montaigne
100. Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
     Michel de Montaigne
101. Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
     Michel de Montaigne
102. Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
     Michel de Montaigne
103. We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
     Michel de Montaigne
104. We can be knowledgable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.
     Michel de Montaigne
105. We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
     Michel de Montaigne
106. When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
     Michel de Montaigne
107. Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
     Michel de Montaigne

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