Citations de Michel de Montaigne

Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, 1533-1592

Quotations from Montaigne's Essays
selected and translated by Anthony Weir
with glosses and comments.

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne
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25.9.10

Ne cherchons pas hors de nous notre mal, il est chez nous, il est planté en nos entrailles.

Suffering and evil come not from outside, but from out our very bones.

1 comment:

  1. - or, since MAL can mean evil, badness, suffering, illness, harm:
    "Evil comes not from without, but is in our DNA". (But Montaigne would not have used such careless jargon.)

    In the sense of 'suffering', Montaigne is echoing the Buddha: 'All [human] life is suffering'. But the word 'planté' is less passive, and I think he means 'our sickness which makes us evil'.

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