Michel De Montaigne Quotes

As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.

To know how to live is my trade and my art.

It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country.

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

I never met a man who thought his thinking was faulty.

We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base

Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.

Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.

Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

This very Rome that we behold deserves our love ...: the only common and universal city.

It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.

The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.

If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.

A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury...but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.

A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.

Only he can judge of matters great and high whose soul is likewise.

Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.

Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.

I give my opinion not as being good, but as being my own.

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

We have power over nothing except our will.

A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.

Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.

God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

We cannot fail in following nature.

After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.

Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion.

For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.