Michel De Montaigne Quotes

I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself.

God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.

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

No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error. To speak more of one's self than is really true is not always mere presumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably pleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in my opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cure it, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in forbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time, interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it. They

There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.

Women are not entirely wrong when they reject the moral rules proclaimed in society, since it is we men alone who have made them.

Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times
in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.

We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

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

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.

I would rather be an expert on me than on Cicero

The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledge. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

No man is a hero to his own valet.

In order always to learn something from others (which is the finest school there can be), I observe in my travels this practice: I always steer those with whom I talk back to the things they know best.

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.

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

A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.

The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught ushis wonderful secrets; our faith is not of our acquiring, it is purely the gift of another's bounty.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.

The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so. Oh what a soft and delightful pillow, and what a sane one on which to rest a well-schooled head, are ignorance and unconcern.

One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.

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

He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.

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.

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir," replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

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

Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.

How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence?

Must not trouble the gods with our affairs; they take no heed of our angers and disputes.Plutarch.]

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

Every one of us is a hodge-podge, so shapeless and diverse in structure that each piece, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others. I

Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all; to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.

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.

A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.

It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious.

Not because Socrates said so, ... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

We have power over nothing except our will.

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

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?

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.

Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.

Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I.

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.

A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it

[O Ruler of Olympus, why did it please thee to add more care to worried mortals by letting them learn of future slaughters by means of cruel omens! Whatever thou hast in store, do it unexpectedly; let the minds of men be blind to their future fate: let him who fears, still cling to hope!]

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

What hits you affects you and wakes you up more then what pleases you.

Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.

Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.

In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.

It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.

The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them.

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none.

No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.

The Stoics forbid this emotion to their sages as being base and cowardly.

The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy.

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

A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.

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.

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination ... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.

For this present child of my brain, what I give it I give unconditionally and irrevocably, just as one does to the children of one's body; such little good as I have already done it is no longer mine to dispose of; it may know plenty of things which I know no longer, and remember things about me that I have forgotten; if the need arose to turn to it for help, it would be like borrowing from a stranger. It is richer than I am, yet I am wiser than it. Few devotees of poetry would not have

If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

In my opinion , every rich man is a miser.

…what privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine handkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterward to lap it carefully up and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other evacuations" – A gentleman

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

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.

Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the mind as the wish to forget it.

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me ... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.

The time is now proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by differing more than by consent.

A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity.

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

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

All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.

It needs courage to be afraid.

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

Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.

Tis the taste of effeminacy that disrelishes ordinary and accustomed things.

Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.