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Age
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Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Ambition
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Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Argument & Debate
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Assumptions
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Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Authors & Writing
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All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Beauty
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The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Belief
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How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Bravery
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The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Cats
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When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Chastity
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An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Children
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For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Communication
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It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Confidence
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Confidence in another person's virtue is no light evidence of your own.
-Michel de Montaigne
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Conversation
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In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in 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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Criticism
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Customs
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The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Death
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I want death to find me planting my cabbage
-Michel de Montaigne
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Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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It is not death that alarms me, but dying.
-Michel de Montaigne
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Deception/Lying
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Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
-Michel de Montaigne
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I do myself a greater injury in lying that I do him of whom I tell a lie.
-Michel de Montaigne
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He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
-Michel de Montaigne
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In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Defeat
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There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Devotion
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I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Discipline
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Dreams
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But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Duality
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It happens as one sees in cages: the birds who are outside despair of ever getting in, and those within are equally desirous of getting out
-Michel de Montaigne
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Education
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We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
-Michel de Montaigne
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In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk -- they are all part of the curriculum.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Enlightenment, The
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This notion is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?.
-Michel de Montaigne, Essays
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Example
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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Fame
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All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Family
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There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Fashion
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A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
-Michel de Montaigne, Essays, I. 26
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Fear
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The thing I fear most is fear.
-Michel de Montaigne
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I know what I am fleeing from, but not what I am in search of.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Fight, Fighting
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The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Fools, Foolishness
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Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Forgiveness
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One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune
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My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Friends
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If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Goals
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No wind favors him who has no destined port.
-Michel de Montaigne
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No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
-Michel de Montaigne
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God
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To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us..
-Michel de Montaigne
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Government
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It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Greed
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It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Habits
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Habit is second nature.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Happiness
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The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
-Michel de Montaigne
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History
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Home
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Honesty
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No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Humanity
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Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Identity
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I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Imagination
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Independence
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The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-sufficient.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Inheritance
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The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Joy, Excitement
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The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Judging, Judgment
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It is a common seen by experience that excellent memories do often accompany weak judgments.
-Michel de Montaigne
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We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Knowledge
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I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Language
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Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.
-Michel de Montaigne, 1580
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Law
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.
-Michel de Montaigne
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It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Life
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My art and profession is to live.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.
-Michel de Montaigne
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We are great fools: He has spent his life in idleness. We say, I have done nothing today. Really, have you not lived? This is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations
-Michel de Montaigne, Of Experience
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Listening
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The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Mankind, Man
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Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Marriage
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We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.
-Michel de Montaigne
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If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
-Michel de Montaigne
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A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Medicine
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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?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Memory
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The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
-Michel de Montaigne
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He who has not a good memory should never take upon himself the trade of lying.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and therefore mine being so treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, in general, the names of the arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more. I turn over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longerrecognise as another's; 'tis only what my judgment has made its advantage of, the discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed: the author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and I am so excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writingsand compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and am not aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and examples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from rich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with reason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that otherbooks do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Men
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It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Military, the
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Mind, the
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Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Miracles
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I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Money
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Taking it all in all, I find it is more trouble to watch after money than to get it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Nature
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Let Nature have her way; she understands her business better than we do.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Opinion
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There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.
-Michel de Montaigne
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I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Order
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There is no course of life so weak and Scottish as that which is ordered by orders, method, and discipline.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Patience
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Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Perception
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...there is no constant existence, neither of our being, nor of the objects. And we, and our judgement, and all mortal things else do uncessantly roll, turn, and passe away. Thus can nothing be certainly established, nor of the one, nor of the other; both the judging and the judged being in continual alteration and motion. We have no communication with being; for every humane nature is ever in the middle between being borne and dying; giving nothing of itself but an obscure appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak opinion. And if perhaps you fix your thought to take its being, it would be even as if one should go about to grasp the water: for how much the more he shall close and press that, which by its own nature is ever gliding, so much the more he shall loose what he would hold and fasten. Thus, seeing all things are subject to passe from one real change to another, reason, which therein seeketh a real subsistence, finds herself deceived as unable to apprehend any thing subsistent and permanent...
-Michel de Montaigne, Essays, in three volumes translated by John Florio
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Philosophy
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Philosophy is doubt.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Pleasure
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Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.
-Michel de Montaigne
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I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Poetry
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It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Potential
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A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Poverty
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Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Prayer
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There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Property
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Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Public
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Publicity
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We endeavor more that men should speak of us, than how and what they speak, and it sufficeth us that our name run in men's mouths, in what manner soever. It stemma that to be known is in some sort to have life and continuance in other men's keeping.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Purpose
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The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
-Michel de Montaigne
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The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with purpose.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Quotations
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I quote others in order to better express myself.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Reading
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Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Reason
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I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Religion
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Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make Gods by dozens.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Rest, Leisure
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It should be noted that children's games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Royalty, Kings, Queens
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Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Satisfaction
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Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Self-Pity
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Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to despise our being.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Service
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Few men have been admired of their familiars.
-Michel de Montaigne
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He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Sex
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After mature deliberation of counsel, the good Queen to establish a rule and immutable example unto all posterity, for the moderation and required modesty in a lawful marriage, ordained the number of six times a day as a lawful, necessary and competent limit.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Sincerity
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Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Slavery
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My reason is not framed to bend or stoop: my knees are.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Sleep
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Those who have compared our life to a dream were right.... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
-Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580
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Solitude
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A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
-Michel de Montaigne, Essais
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Stubbornness
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Obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigor and stability.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Success & Failure
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Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Suffering
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Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Suicide
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I don't break the law* made for crooks, when I take away my own property - thus I am not obliged to conform to the law made for murderers when I deprive myself of my own life.
*(referring to Thou Shalt Not Kill)
-Michel de Montaigne
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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.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Teaching
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In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Thought
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When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Travel
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A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Truth
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I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare. I dare more and more as I grow older.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Vacations
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Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Value
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Those things that are dearest to us have cost us the most.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Victory
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The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue
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There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
-Michel de Montaigne
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From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Wisdom
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Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
-Michel de Montaigne
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We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Books by and about Michel de Montaigne
