Michel De Montaigne Quotes

Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.

Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.

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

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.

There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.

Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.

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

I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife.

I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.

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?

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.

If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.

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

The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.

We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak.

The judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar in everything.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

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

He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.

When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.

To make judgements about great and lofty things, a soul of the same stature is needed; otherwise we ascribe to them that vice which is our own.

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

Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.

I walk firmer and more secure uphill than down.

Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.

The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.

We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.

I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.

I do not understand; I pause; I examine.

In love, 'tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us.

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

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

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

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.

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

Give me the provisions and whole apparatus of a kitchen, and I would starve.

There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.

The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.

Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

Laws are maintained in credit, not because they are essentially just, but because they are laws. It is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have none other.