Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?

I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.

I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.

~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I.

How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!

Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.

The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

There is nothing in which a horse's power is better revealed than in a neat, clean stop.

For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.

What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?

The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser.

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.

I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.

It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still remember that it is man that gives, and man that receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, it is a mortal hand that accepts it.

The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.

We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.

The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.

It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.

The continuous work of our life is to build death.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.

Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.

Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.