Michel de Montaigne > Quotes

“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
― Michel de Montaigne

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“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.”
― Montaigne, Les Essais

“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”
― Michel de Montaigne , The Complete Essays

“If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“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.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
― Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere."

"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”
― 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.”
― Montaigne

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“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

“My art and profession is to live.”
― Montaigne

“Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.”
― michel de montaigne