Michel De Montaigne Quotes

I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

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

Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.

Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.

It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.

To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

It is not without good reason, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.

The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

My trade and art is to live.

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

The thing I fear most is fear.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.

It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction; I love myself too well.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

Saying is one thing and doing is another

No wind favors he who has no destined port.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to 't.

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

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.

Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

No noble thing can be done without risks.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

Habit is a second nature.

In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.

We ought to love temperance for itself, and in obedience to God who has commanded it and chastity; but what I am forced to by catarrhs, or owe to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.

Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Whatever the Benefits of Fortune are , they yet require a Palate fit to relish and taste them; 'Tis Fruition, and not Possession, that renders us Happy.