Michel De Montaigne Quotes

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

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

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

Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.

I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.

Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.

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.

I am myself the matter of my book.

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould

A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.

Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

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.

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.

It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.

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

Only the fools are certain and assured.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

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

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

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

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

The only thing certain is nothing is certain.

Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.

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

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.

A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.

We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.

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

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

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

Saying is one thing and doing is another; we are to consider the sermon and the preacher distinctly and apart.

The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.