The Art of Honest Self-Knowledge — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne says others form man while he only reports him, portraying one ill-fashioned particular person he cannot remodel, and he does not paint being but passage from minute to minute.

He proposes an ordinary life where philosophy governs private conduct: every one may play the honest man on stage, but within the bosom one must be regular, as Bias kept the same within and without. We are not to call peevish private interest duty, nor treacherous conduct courage; zeal without just cause is appetite wearing armour.

He very rarely repents, satisfied with the conscience of a man, not an angel; repentance after sudden passion differs from rooted habit, and he does not call misfortune repentance when judgment stayed one from youth.

A Gascon peasant told Montaigne theft was dishonest yet kept stealing to escape poverty; Montaigne answered that if need pressed him he might steal too, but would not call the act less dishonest. He speaks of himself in the third person as others do, yet insists his portrait must show the same face in kitchen and council.

Age cools appetite and ambition, which fools mistake for virtue; Montaigne would live again as he has lived, bear infirmities as natural seasons, and refuse theatrical late repentance performed for spectators. His studies aimed to teach him to do, not to write; he made his life his trade, and would rather be a good cook than a clever bookman in ill breeches.

Sudden passions may repent, but rooted vices only sleep; he does not count cooling lust or ambition as moral progress. He disowns words his tongue let slip without thought, because abolishing oath-keeping starts by excusing small slips.

He has not corrected great faults, only let them age out of reach, and would not purchase glory with three stone fits. Others form man; he only reports passage, and asks readers to judge conduct at home before applauding stage repentance.

Give me health, he says, in God's name; let others love physic if they will. If he falls, he wants the world to know when he is fallen from what he fell, not from a sudden conversion dressed as merit.