Michel de Montaigne Quotes

If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

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.

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.

The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.

I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.

Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.

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

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.

As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.

The soul that has no established aim loses itself

Fear sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground, and fetters them from moving.

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

Women are more susceptible to pain than to pleasure.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature

When we have got it, we want something else.

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

Habit is second nature.

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.

The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.

To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

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

If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.

A man must become wise at his own expense.

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.

It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use or currency. 'Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum' [They have learned how to talk with others, not with themselves]

What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!

But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.

If by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humor, let us give it up.

To philosophize is to learn to die.

Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.