Michel De Montaigne Quotes & Sayings

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none. — Michel De Montaigne

What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other? — Michel De Montaigne

The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it. — Michel De Montaigne

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others. — Michel De Montaigne

It is an absolute perfection ... to get the very most out of one's individuality. — Michel De Montaigne

The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will. — Michel De Montaigne

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. — Michel De Montaigne

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul. — Michel De Montaigne

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears. — Michel De Montaigne

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself. — Michel De Montaigne

The soul that has no established aim loses itself — Michel De Montaigne

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing ... I do not understand it ... Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is ... , which is to say, I suspend my judgment. — Michel De Montaigne

I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars. — Michel De Montaigne

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition. — Michel De Montaigne

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other. — Michel De Montaigne

What hits you affects you and wakes you up more then what pleases you. — Michel De Montaigne

Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents. — Michel De Montaigne

The greatest and glorious masterpiece of a man is how to live with a purpose. — Michel De Montaigne

I do not understand; I pause; I examine. — Michel De Montaigne

When we spread our name by scattering it into many mouths we call that 'increasing our renown'; we wish our name to be favourably received there and that it may gain from such an increase. That is what is most pardonable in such a design. But carried to excess this malady makes many seek to be on others' lips, no matter how. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Livy says of Manlius, that they were more desirous of a wide reputation than a good one.42 That is a common vice. We are more concerned that men should talk of us than of how they talk of us; and we are far more concerned that our name should run from mouth to mouth than under what circumstances it should do so. — Michel De Montaigne

If you did not have death, you would curse me incessantly for depriving you of it. Realizing its advantages, I have deliberately mixed a little bitterness into it to prevent you from embracing it too greedily and imprudently. To place you in the state of moderation I ask of you, of neither running from life nor fleeing from death, I have modulated them both between sweet and bitter. — Michel De Montaigne

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. — Michel De Montaigne

A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently. — Michel De Montaigne

The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is — Michel De Montaigne

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness. — Michel De Montaigne

If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. — Michel De Montaigne

Whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of hiding them any more than I would a bald and grizzled portrait of myself. These are my humours, my opinions, things which I believe, not to be believed. My aim is reveal myself which may well be different tomorrow. — Michel De Montaigne

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles. — Michel De Montaigne

Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place. — Michel De Montaigne

Let every foot have its own shoe. — Michel De Montaigne

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition - and perchance to some excess - I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond. — Michel De Montaigne

I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine. — Michel De Montaigne

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people. — Michel De Montaigne

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better. — Michel De Montaigne

Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in conversation. — Michel De Montaigne

The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure no slight pleasure. — Michel De Montaigne

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures. — Michel De Montaigne

Let us never allow ourselves to be carried away so completely by pleasure that we fail to recall from time to time in how many ways our happiness is prey to death and threatened by its grip. — Michel De Montaigne

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up. — Michel De Montaigne

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs. — Michel De Montaigne

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

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

If each man, on hearing a wise maxim, immediately looked to see how it properly applied to him, he would find that it was not so much a pithy saying as a whiplash applied to the habitual stupidity of his faculty of judgement. — Michel De Montaigne

Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves. — Michel De Montaigne

Whatever can be done another day can be done today. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky. — Michel De Montaigne

Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform. — Michel De Montaigne

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude. — Michel De Montaigne

The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly. — Michel De Montaigne

No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him. — Michel De Montaigne

Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds. — Michel De Montaigne

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most. — Michel De Montaigne

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong. — Michel De Montaigne

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men. — Michel De Montaigne

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. — Michel De Montaigne

The most certain sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness; her state is like the things above the moon, always clear and serene. — Michel De Montaigne

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement. — Michel De Montaigne

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God. — Michel De Montaigne

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication. — Michel De Montaigne

The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself. — Michel De Montaigne

If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

You never speak about yourself without loss. Your self-condemnation is always accredited, your self-praise discredited. There may be some people of my temperament, I who learn better by contrast than by example, and by flight than by pursuit. This was the sort of teaching that Cato the Elder had in view when he said that the wise have more to learn from the fools than the fools from the wise; and also that ancient lyre player who, Pausanias tells us, was accustomed to force his pupils to go hear a bad musician who lived across the way, where they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. — Michel De Montaigne

An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects. — Michel De Montaigne

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

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity. — Michel De Montaigne

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

I want death to find me planting my cabbages. — Michel De Montaigne

Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid. — Michel De Montaigne

The Stoics forbid this emotion to their sages as being base and cowardly. — Michel De Montaigne

The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them. — Michel De Montaigne

There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear. — Michel De Montaigne

Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh. — Michel De Montaigne

Neither good nor ill is done to us by Fortune: she merely offers us the matter and the seeds: our soul, more powerful than she is, can mould it or sow them as she pleases, being the only cause and mistress of our happy state or our unhappiness. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

Death pays all debts. — Michel De Montaigne

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality — Michel De Montaigne

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness. — Michel De Montaigne

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul — Michel De Montaigne

Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls. — Michel De Montaigne

Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream. — Michel De Montaigne

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve. — Michel De Montaigne

To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death. — Michel De Montaigne

Retire within yourselves; but first prepare yourselves to receive yourselves there. It would be madness to trust yourselves to yourselves if you do not know how to control yourselves. There are ways of failing in solitude as well as in company. — Michel De Montaigne

The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

Whenever a new finding is reported to the world people say - It is probably not true. Later on, when the reliability of a new finding has been fully confirmed, people say - OK, it may be true but it has no real significance. At last, when even the significance of the finding is obvious to everybody, people say - Well, it might have some significance, but the idea is not new. — Michel De Montaigne

May God defend me from myself. — Michel De Montaigne

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one. — Michel De Montaigne

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness. — Michel De Montaigne

Honesty is a question of right and wrong, not a matter of policy — Michel De Montaigne

If anyone gets intoxicated with his knowledge when he looks beneath him, let him turn his eyes upward toward past ages, and he will lower his horns, finding there so many thousands of minds that trample him underfoot. If he gets into some flattering presumption about his valor, let him remember the lives of the two Scipios, so many armies, so many nations, all of whom leave him so far behind them. No particular quality will make a man proud who balances it against the many weaknesses and imperfections that are also in him, and, in the end, against the nullity of man's estate. — Michel De Montaigne

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. — Michel De Montaigne

My trade and art is to live. — Michel De Montaigne

As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice. — Michel De Montaigne

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie. — Michel De Montaigne