Michel De Montaigne Quotes

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.

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

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

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

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

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

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.

~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

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.

The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

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

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

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

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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

My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

A man must become wise at his own expense.

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.

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I.

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

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

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

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

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

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

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.

I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other

The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.