Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness.”
- Date
- 1580
- English wording
- Charles Cotton — Translator · from French
Meaning of “The most manifest sign of wisdom is a…”
Montaigne associates wisdom with a settled, clear disposition rather than with performative gloom or intellectual severity.
Where does it come from?
Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXV, ‘Of the Education of Children,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 05 #3585 / Complete Essays #3600. The cheerfulness sentence belongs to Montaigne’s account of philosophy as forming a serene, active way of life rather than a gloomy scholastic display.
