Q0328

Michel de Montaigne

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly.
Thinker Michel de Montaigne
School Humanism
Source Essays III.13
Theme Humanity
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Essays III.13, within the tradition of Humanism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of humanity, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Michel de Montaigne's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Michel de Montaigne. (n.d.). There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0328

MLA: Michel de Montaigne. “There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0328.

Chicago: Michel de Montaigne. “There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0328.

Same thinker

More from Michel de Montaigne

  1. What do I know?
  2. To philosophize is to learn how to die.
  3. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
  4. The usefulness of living is not in length of days, but in their use: one may have lived long, and yet have lived little.
  5. Better a well-made head than a well-filled head.

All quotations by Michel de Montaigne

Same theme

More on humanity

  1. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
  2. Man is a sacred thing to man.
  3. There are more things to admire in men than to despise.
  4. In choosing himself, man chooses all men.
  5. Sincerity is the Way of Heaven; making oneself sincere is the way of human beings.

Browse the humanity theme