Iosif 's Key Ideas from On Friendship
by Michel de Montaigne

We should not only examine what each one says,  but what are his opinions and what grounds he has for holding them.

When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost;  for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.

A father is wretched indeed if he can only hold the love of his children - if you can call it love - by making them dependent on his help.

We should make ourselves respected for our virtues and our abilities and loved for our goodness and gentlemanliness.

If you ask my opinion it is quite untrue that authority is firmer or more stable when it relies on force than when it is associated with affection.

I condemn all violence in the education of tender minds which are being trained for honour and freedom.

In rigour and constraint there is always something servile, and I hold that you will never achieve by force what you cannot achieve by reason, intelligence and skill.

For the perfect friendship which I am talking about is indivisible: each gives himself so entirely to his friend that he has nothing left to share with another: on the contrary he grieves that he is not two-fold,  three-fold or four-fold and that he does not have several souls,  several wills,  so that he could give them all to the one he loves 

It cannot matter to me what the religion of my doctor or my lawyer is: that consideration has nothing in common with the friendly services which they owe it to me.

And in such commerce as arises at home with my servants I act the same way. I make few inquiries about the chastity of my footman: I want to know if he is hardworking.

I am less concerned by a mule driver who gambles than by one who is an idiot or by a cook who swears than by one who is incompetent. It is not my concern to tell the world how to behave(plenty of others do that) but how I behave in it.

For just as a weight placed on a balance must weight down, so the mind must yield to clear evidence.

The more empty a soul is and the less furnished with counterweights, the more easily its balance will be swayed under the force of its first convictions.

He who have never actually seen a river, the first time he did so took it for the ocean, since we think that the biggest things that we know represent the limits of what Nature can produce in that species

Just as a river may not be all that big, but seems huge to a man who has never seen a bigger one, so, too for the biggest tree or biggest man; and the biggest of any kind which we know is considered huge by us.

Vainglory and curiosity are the twin scourges of our souls. The former makes us stick our noses into everything, the latter forbids us to leave anything unresolved or undecided

Whenever we meet opposition, we do not look to see if it is just but how we can get out of it, rightly or wrongly. Instead of welcoming arms we stretch out our claws.

I can put up with being roughly handled by my friends: ‘You are an idiot! You are raving!’ Among gentlemen I like people to express themselves heartily, their words following wherever their thought lead.

We ought to toughen and fortify our ears against being seduced by the sound of polite words.

I welcome truth, I fondle it, in whosoever hand I find it; I surrender to it cheerfully, welcoming it with my vanquished arms as soon as I see it approaching it from afar.

I take such pleasure in being judged and known that it is virtually indifferent to me which of the forms it takes.

My thought so often contradicts and condems itself that is all one to me if someone else does so, seeing that I give to his refutation only such authority as I please.

But I fall out with someone who is to high-handed, like one man I know that laments the fact that he gave you advice if you do not accept and takes as an insult if you shy at following it.

It is impossible to argue in good faith with a fool. Not only my judgement is corrupted at the hands of so violent a master, so is my sense of right or wrong.

Our quarrels ought to be outlawed and punished as are other verbal crimes. Since they are always ruled and governed by anger, what vices do they not awaken and pile up on each other? First we feel enmity for the arguments and then for the men.

In debating we are taught merely how to refute arguments, the results of each side’s refuting the other is that the fruit of our debates is the destruction and annihilation of the truth.

What greater victory do you want to teach your enemy that he cannot stand up to you?

Get the better of him by your argument and the winner is the truth; do so by your order and style, then you are the winner!

I do not mean that nobody should make indictments unless he is spotless; if that were so no one would make them.

What I mean is that when our judgement brings a charge against another man over a matter then in question, it must not exempt us from an internal judicial inquiry.

It is a work of charity for a man who is unable to weed out a defect in himself to try, nevertheless, to weed it out in another in whom the seedling may be less malignant and stubborn.

There is no pleasure, however proper, which does not become a matter of reproach when excessive and intemperate.

But, seriously though, is not man a wretched creature? Because of his natural attributes he is hardly able to taste one single pleasure pure and entire: yet he has to go and curtail even that by argument; he is not wretched enough until he has increased his wretchedness by art and assiduity.

Human wisdom is stupidly clever when used to diminish the number and sweetness of such pleasures as do belong to us, just as she employs her art with diligence and fitness when she bring command cosmetics to our ills and makes us feel them less