Michel de Montaigne Quotes

A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

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

To smell, though well, is to stink.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

You have your face bare; I am all face.

A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!

I would have every man write what he knows and no more.

We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.

Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. "What!" he said, "Must we void ourselves as we run?" Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.

There are few things on which we can pass a sincere judgement, because there are few things in which we have not, in one way or another, a particular interest.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

Honesty is a question of right and wrong, not a matter of policy

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.

There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.

I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.

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.

Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.

A tutor should not be continually thundering instruction into the ears of his pupil, as if he were pouring it through a funnel, but, after having put the lad, like a young horse, on a trot, before him, to observe his paces, and see what he is able to perform, should, according to the extent of his capacity, induce him to taste, to distinguish, and to find out things for himself; sometimes opening the way, at other times leaving it for him to open; and by abating or increasing his own pace, accommodate his precepts to the capacity of his pupil.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?

Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.

Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.

Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said, "Somebody else's".

Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.

Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves, not as determined and decreed by heavenly ordinance.

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

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

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.

I am myself the matter of my book.

The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.

The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.

All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.