Michel de Montaigne Quotes

For in truth habit is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She establishes in us, little by little, stealthily, the foothold of her authority; but having by this mild and humble beginning settled and planted it with the help of time, she soon uncovers to us a furious and tyrannical face against which we no longer have the liberty of even raising our eyes.

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?

Happiness is a singular incentive to mediocrity.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head

'T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.

So much din from so many philosophical brainboxes! Trust in your philosophy now! Boast that you are the one who has found the lucky bean in your festive pudding!

Chaque homme porte la forme, entière de l'humaîne condition.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober.

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.