Michel de Montaigne Quotes (145 Quotes)

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

Whatever are the benefits of fortune, they yet require a palate fit to relish and taste them.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

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

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which to-day are fables to us.

As plants are suffocated and drowned with too much moisture, and lamps with too much oil, so is the active part of the understanding with too much study.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Extreme patience of long-sufferance, if it once come to be dissolved, produceth most bitter and excessive revenges.

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

We have need of very little learning to have a good mind.

The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model, and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance.

The word is half his that speaks, And half his that hears it.

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

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

Marriage is a covenant which hath nothing free but the entrance.

Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present.

The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Man is certainly stark mad he cannot make a flea, And yet he will be making gods by dozens.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

What do I know.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

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

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

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

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

As an enemy is made more fierce by our flight, so Pain grows proud to see us knuckle under it. She will surrender upon much better terms to those who make head against her.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

We must keep a little back shop... where we may establish our own true liberty.

Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.