Michel De Montaigne Quotes

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.

When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.

The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.

To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.

Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.

Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.

The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.

I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.

Let every foot have its own shoe.

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

It needs courage to be afraid.

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.

Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.

It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.

We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.

Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would have had me.

The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

L'utilité du vivre n'est pas en l'espace: elle est en l'usage.

Heureuse la mort qui oste le loisir aux apprests de tel equipage.

D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

J'accuse toute violence en l'education d'une ame tendre, qu'on dresse pour l'honneur, et la liberté.

Je hay entre autres vices, cruellement la cruauté, et par nature et par jugement, comme l'extreme de tous les vices.

Il n'est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes.

Les naturels sanguinaires à l'endroit des bestes, tesmoignent une propension naturelle à la cruauté.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l'homme quelque instinct à l'inhumanité

We need but little learning to live happily.

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself