Michel De Montaigne Quotes

Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.

Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.

One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.

We are all of us richer than we think we are.

Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.

There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.

If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.

I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.

He that is a friend to himself, know; he is a friend to all.

All general judgments are loose and imperfect

Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.

There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.

The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious.

Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after.

If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.

The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.

Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.

What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.

A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.

He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.

A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.

Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.

I would have every man write what he knows and no more.

When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act.

For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.

Men throw themselves on foreign assistances to spare their own, which, after all, are the only certain and sufficient ones.

We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.

A man must not always tell all, for that be folly; but what a man says should be what he thinks.

Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.