Michel de Montaigne Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Michel de Montaigne:
I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
One may be humble out of pride.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
The thing I fear most is fear.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
My trade and art is to live.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
~Michel de Montaigne
Link:
Share:
Permalink:
Browse: