Michel De Montaigne Quotes
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.
We are nearer neighbours to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones.
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.
Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.
Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.
Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.
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.
As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.
Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.
Lovers are angry, reconciled, entreat, thank, appoint, and finally speak all things, by their.
Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.
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
A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.
I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself.
Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.
Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.
Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
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.
But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.
Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.
The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.
An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.
I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.
The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.
It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
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.