Daily Inspiration Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Self-contempt, Montaigne suggests, isn’t just another flaw on the long Renaissance inventory of human weaknesses; it’s the one that turns the knife. The line lands with the quiet violence of someone who has watched piety and “virtue” become alibis for cruelty. To despise our being is “savage” because it doesn’t merely judge behavior, it denies the legitimacy of the creature doing the living. That’s a form of inward persecution, and Montaigne—writing in a France torn by the Wars of Religion—knew how easily moral certainty curdles into bloodletting. His point is almost political: once contempt becomes a habit, it doesn’t stay private.

The intent is characteristically Montaignian: to puncture the fantasy that humans can be improved by self-hatred. He’s not selling self-esteem; he’s warning against an ascetic ethic that treats ordinary appetites, fears, and contradictions as evidence of worthlessness. The Essays keep circling the same wager: you get more humane outcomes by telling the truth about yourself than by staging a trial inside your head.

The subtext reads like a rebuke to both theologians and Stoics who turn idealized standards into cudgels. Montaigne’s skepticism isn’t nihilism; it’s damage control. Accept your “infirmities” as part of the package, and you become less eager to purify the world by force. Despise your being, and you’ll look for someone else to despise next.