Michel de Montaigne Quotes

588 Sourced Quotes

Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

Michel de Montaigne
I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

Michel de Montaigne
There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge.
Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance

Michel de Montaigne
For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.

Michel de Montaigne
The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

Michel de Montaigne
There is a greater distance between some men and others, than between some men and the beasts.

Michel de Montaigne
God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, [...] "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand

Michel de Montaigne
He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.

Michel de Montaigne
Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

Michel de Montaigne
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

Michel de Montaigne
The yoke of love is sometimes heavier than that of all the virtues.

Michel de Montaigne
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

Michel de Montaigne
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Michel de Montaigne
A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.

Michel de Montaigne
We were halves throughout, and to that degree that methinks by outliving him I defraud him of his part.

Michel de Montaigne
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

Michel de Montaigne
No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

Michel de Montaigne
One should always have one's boots on, and be ready to leave.

Michel de Montaigne
In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

Michel de Montaigne
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

Michel de Montaigne
The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.

Michel de Montaigne
Bad examples may be as profitable to virtue as good ones.

Michel de Montaigne
When the soul is without a definite aim, she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.

Michel de Montaigne
Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

Michel de Montaigne
Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

Michel de Montaigne
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

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

Michel de Montaigne
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.

Michel de Montaigne
The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.

Michel de Montaigne
I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

Michel de Montaigne