Michel De Montaigne Quotes

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

- Michel de Montaigne

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

- Michel de Montaigne

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

- Michel de Montaigne

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

- Michel de Montaigne

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

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

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

- Michel de Montaigne

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

- Michel de Montaigne

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

- Michel de Montaigne

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

- Michel de Montaigne

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

- Michel de Montaigne

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

- Michel de Montaigne

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

- Michel de Montaigne

It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

- Michel de Montaigne

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

- Michel de Montaigne

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

- Michel de Montaigne

We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

- Michel de Montaigne

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

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

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

- Michel de Montaigne

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

- Michel de Montaigne

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

- Michel de Montaigne

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

- Michel de Montaigne

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

- Michel de Montaigne

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

- Michel de Montaigne

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

- Michel de Montaigne

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

- Michel de Montaigne

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

- Michel de Montaigne

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

- Michel de Montaigne

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

- Michel de Montaigne

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

- Michel de Montaigne

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

- Michel de Montaigne

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

- Michel de Montaigne

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

- Michel de Montaigne

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

- Michel de Montaigne

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

- Michel de Montaigne

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

- Michel de Montaigne

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

- Michel de Montaigne

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

- Michel de Montaigne

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

- Michel de Montaigne

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

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

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

- Michel de Montaigne

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

- Michel de Montaigne

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

- Michel de Montaigne

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

- Michel de Montaigne

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

- Michel de Montaigne

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

- Michel de Montaigne

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

- Michel de Montaigne

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

- Michel de Montaigne

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

- Michel de Montaigne

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

- Michel de Montaigne

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

- Michel de Montaigne

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

- Michel de Montaigne

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

- Michel de Montaigne

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

- Michel de Montaigne

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

- Michel de Montaigne

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

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

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

- Michel de Montaigne

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

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

- Michel de Montaigne

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

- Michel de Montaigne

One may be humble out of pride.

- Michel de Montaigne

My trade and art is to live.

- Michel de Montaigne

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

- Michel de Montaigne

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

- Michel de Montaigne

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

- Michel de Montaigne

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

- Michel de Montaigne

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

- Michel de Montaigne

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

- Michel de Montaigne

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

- Michel de Montaigne

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

- Michel de Montaigne