Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Saying is one thing, doing another.

of countering it if that had been the only factor, since all non-rational inborn tendencies are a kind of disease which ought to be fought against.

In marriage, alliances and money rightly weigh at least as much as attractiveness and beauty.

Kings and philosophers shit — and so do ladies.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays

Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well...

When I lately retired to my house I resolved, as far as I could, to meddle in nothing, but to pass in peace and privacy what little time I had to live. It seemed to me I could not better gratify my mind than by giving it full leisure to dwell in its own thoughts and divert itself with them. And I hoped that with the passage of time, it could do this with greater ease as it became more settled and ripe. But the contrary was the case. Like a horse broke loose, it gave itself a hundred times more rein. There rose in me a horde of chimerae and fantastic creatures, one upon the other, without order or relevance. To contemplate more coolly] their queerness and ineptitude I began to put them in writing - hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself. A ming which has no set goal loses itself. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. No wind serves the man bound for no port.

Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.

[Wisely does God hide what is to come under the darkness of night, laughing if a mortal projects his anxiety further than is proper… That man will be happy and master of himself who every day declares, ‘I have lived. Tomorrow let Father Jove fill the heavens with dark clouds or with purest light’… Let your mind rejoice in the present: let it loathe to trouble about what lies in the future.]

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.