100 Quotes by Michel Montaigne

• The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
• If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
• I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
• I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
• I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
• I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
• I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
• 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.
• I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
• 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.
• It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
• 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.
• How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
• If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
• If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
• If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
• Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
• In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
• There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
• I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
• Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
• A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
• A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
• A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
• A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
• A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
• Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
• Ambition is not a vice of little people.
• An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
• An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
• Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
• Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
• I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
• Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
• 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.
• Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
• Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
• Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
• Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
• Few men have been admired of their familiars.
• For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
• Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
• He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
• He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
• How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
• It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
• Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
• 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 good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
• The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
• The thing I fear most is fear.
• The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
• The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
• 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.
• There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
• There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
• There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
• The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
• There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
• The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
• There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
• There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
• 'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
• Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
• Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
• Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
• We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
• We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
• We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
• When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
• There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
• Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
• It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
• Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
• Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
• Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
• 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.
• Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
• Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
• My trade and art is to live.
• The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
• No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
• Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
• Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
• Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
• Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
• 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.
• One may be humble out of pride.
• Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
• Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
• Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
• The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
• The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
• 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.
• No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

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