Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

Every movement reveals us.

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.

Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.

God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.

A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.

I walk firmer and more secure uphill than down.

Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.

Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.

Every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.

There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.

The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.

No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.

The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.

The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools; still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors.

..a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will.

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.

It needs courage to be afraid.

Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.

Courtesy, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in the very beginning of our acquaintance and familiarity; and, consequently, that which first opens the door for us to better ourselves by the example of others, if there be anything in the society worth notice

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.