Michel De Montaigne Quotes

The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.

Men are nothing until they are excited.

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

The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.

Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.

A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.

Man will rise, if God by exception lends him a hand; he will rise by abandoning and renouncing his own means, and letting himselfbe raised and uplifted by purely celestial means.

My art and profession is to live.

God sends the cold according to the coat.

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

The continuous work of our life is to build death.

The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.

I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.

If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

It is commonly seene by experience, that excellent memories do rather accompany weake judgements.

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

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

Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.

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

It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.

T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles.

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.

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

How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable "Hoc" produced for the world!

Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.

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

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

..a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

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.

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

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

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.

The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.

A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.