The Essays of Montaigne — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,716 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Complete.

The Essays of Montaigne — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,716 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Complete.

But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees, and plants.  We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us.  Nor shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish, that I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the most unseasonably importunes me to do so.  The Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts.  The Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, by whose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved.  The Athenians made a decree that the mules and moyls which had served at the building of the temple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at their own choice, without hindrance.  The Agrigentines had a common use solemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of some rare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and even those that had only been kept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinary with them in all other things, also particularly appeared in the sumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end, and which remained in their beauty several ages after.  The Egyptians buried wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmed their bodies, and put on mourning at their death.  Cimon gave an honourable sepulture to the mares with which he had three times gained the prize of the course at the Olympic Games.  The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has ever since retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple about selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long in his service.

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     A little cheese when a mind to make a feast
     A word ill taken obliterates ten years’ merit
     Cato said:  So many servants, so many enemies
     Cherish themselves most where they are most wrong
     Condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul
     Cruelty is the very extreme of all vices
     Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice
     Epicurus
     Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness
     He felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an action
     He judged other men by himself
     I cannot well refuse to play with my dog
     I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather
     I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age
     I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason
     Incline the history to their own fancy
     It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me
     Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment
     Learn the theory from those who best know the practice
     Loved them for our sport,

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The Essays of Montaigne — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.