Michel de Montaigne Quotes

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

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.

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

There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.

Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.

To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.

But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.

We cannot fail in following nature.

We are all of us richer than we think we are.

No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.

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

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.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.

Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.

Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

Adrian, the Emperor, exclaimed incessantly, when dying, "That the crowd of physicians had killed him."

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.

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

Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.

Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.

I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

Don't be afraid to say what you are not afraid to think

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.

What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.

I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

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

Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.

He that is a friend to himself, know; he is a friend to all.

As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.

Books are a languid pleasure.