Michel de Montaigne Quotes

In our time the most warlike nations are the most rude and ignorant.

It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room. I seek out change indiscriminately and tumultuously. My style and my mine alike go roaming. A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid, say the precepts of our masters, and even more so their examples.

A thousand poets drag and languish prosaically; but the best ancient prose — and I scatter it here indiscriminately as verse — shines throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and gives the effect of its frenzy. To poetry we must certainly concede mastery and preeminence in speech. The poet, says Plato, seated on the tripod of the Muses, pours out in a frenzy whatever comes into his mouth, like the spout of a fountain, without ruminating and weighing it; and from him escape things of different colors and contradictory substance in an intermittent flow. He himself is utterly poetic, and the old theology is poetry, the scholars say, and the first philosophy. It is the original language of the Gods.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can

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.

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.

Rien n'imprime si vivement quelque chose à notre souvenance que le désir de l'oublier.

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

Friendship on the contrary is enjoyed in proportion to our desire: since it is a matter of the mind, with our souls being purified by practising it

Faccio dire agli altri quello che non posso dire altrettanto bene, sia per insufficienza del mio linguaggio sia per insufficienza del mio sentimento.

A noble heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths. There everything is good, at least everything is human.

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.

No wind favors he who has no destined port.

Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.

that it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence.