Michel de Montaigne Quotes

It is fear that I stand most in fear of, in sharpness it exceeds every other feeling.

It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.

Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.

We endeavor more that men should speak of us, than how and what they speak, and it sufficeth us that our name run in men's mouths, in what manner soever. It stemma that to be known is in some sort to have life and continuance in other men's keeping.

My appetite comes to me while eating.

For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

For all parts of the body that we see fit to expose to the wind and air are found fit to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, according as custom invites us. For if there is a part of us that is tender and that seems as though it should fear the cold, it should be the stomach, where digestion takes place; our fathers left it uncovered, and our ladies, soft and delicate as they are, sometimes go half bare down to the navel.

A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.

I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

No man profiteth but by the loss of others.

The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor; those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.

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.

What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?

Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.

.. since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be something which the soul knows but the soul's very essence and temperament, not something acquired but a natural property.

People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.

Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.

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

Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.

It needs good management to enjoy life. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or less attention that we give to it...The shorter my possession of life the deeper and fuller I must make it.

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

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.

Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.

If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.

Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

It's not victory if it doesn't end the war.

The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.

Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

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

The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

Of the opinions of philosophy I most gladly embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, most human and most our own; my opinions, in conformity with my conduct, are low and humble.

The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

Men are nothing until they are excited.

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

One may be humble out of pride.

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.