Michel de Montaigne Quotes (145 Quotes)

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

To know how to live is all my calling and all my art.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

The land of marriage has this peculiarity that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from it.

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

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

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

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

My trade and art is to live.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

Of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

There is no man so good who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the law, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

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

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

Time is the sovereign physician of our passions.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

We call that against nature which cometh against custom. But there is nothing, whatsoever it be, that is not According to nature.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

All actions beyond the ordinary limits are subject to a sinister interpretation.

It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

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

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

The pursuit of pleasure Is the most pleasant pleasure.

In plain truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice.

An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.