French Moralist

Michel de Montaigne

Philosophy

1533–1592

"He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live."

🇺🇸Adam Smith

Economics

Enlightenment

"When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers."

🇫🇷Jean de La Bruyère

Philosophy

Classicism

1645–1696

"A Man must be very inert to have no character at all."

🇩🇪Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Science

1786–1845

"The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism."

🇫🇷Claude Adrien Helvétius

Philosophy

atheism

1715–1771

"No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment."

🇫🇷Étienne de La Boétie

Literature

1530–1563

"The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from wrong nourishment."

🇫🇷Pierre Nicole

Ethics

1625–1695

"The soul which stops at creatures delays the course of the voyage by which it moves toward God; and by desiring to enjoy them, it proportionately deprives itself of the enjoyment of God."