Michel De Montaigne Quotes

Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

And not to serve for a table-talk.

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.

The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven.

Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

We are born to inquire into truth; it belongs to a greater to possess it

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 land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.

The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.

Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.

Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.

It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.

It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.

In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.

How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?

Books are a languid pleasure.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.

No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

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

A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.

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.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd.

A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

The desire for riches is more sharpened by their use than by their need. Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.

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.

I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves, not as determined and decreed by heavenly ordinance.

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.