Michel de Montaigne Quotes

When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act.

One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.

Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.

Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .

A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.

All general judgments are loose and imperfect

Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.

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

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.

Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation." -If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.

Experience stands on its own dunghill in medicine, and reason yields it place. Medicine has always professed experience to be the touchstone of its operations.

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.

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

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.

We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.

... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.

The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.

A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.

In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.

Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.

Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.

The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.

I do not understand; I pause; I examine.

Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.

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

The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.

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