Michel De Montaigne Quotes

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.

In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.

Habit is a second nature.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

Saying is one thing and doing is another

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction; I love myself too well.

Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.

If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

Taking it all in all, I find it is more trouble to watch after money than to get it.

As far as fidelity is concerned, there is no animal in the world as treacherous as man.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.

The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.

Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.

The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

My appetite comes to me while eating.

Every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.

Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said, "Somebody else's".

Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them; and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.

You have your face bare; I am all face.

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.