Michel de Montaigne Quotes

One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.

Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

He loves little who loves by rule.

True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.

I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, and one part is no less necessary than the other.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

When I was young, beautiful ancient statues were castrated, so that the eye might not be corrupted.... Nothing was gained, unless horses and asses had also been castrated.

After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?

Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.

Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.

There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.

I have a vocabulary all my own. I "pass the time" when it is wet and disagreeable. When it is fine I do not wish to pass it; I ruminate it and hold on to it. We should hasten over the bad, and settle upon the good.

The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.

We cannot be held to what is beyond our strength and means; for at times the accomplishment and execution may not be in our power, and indeed there is nothing really in our own power except the will: on this are necessarily based and founded all the principles that regulate the duty of man.

Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

I would rather be an expert on me than on Cicero

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.

'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.

My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?