Philosopher · French · 1533 – 1592 · 108 quotes
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
Michel de Montaigne
Philosopher · French · 1533 – 1592
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
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.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
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.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
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.
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
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.
An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
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.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
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.
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
One may be humble out of pride.
The thing I fear most is fear.
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.
My trade and art is to live.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
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.
